


Tainted

by biggestbaddestwolf



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Biotics, Combat Violence, M/M, Past Drug Use, Pre-Mass Effect 3, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggestbaddestwolf/pseuds/biggestbaddestwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as Kaidan returns to the Normandy, they stumble upon a terrorist plot. With Kaidan being physically effected by the finds of their investigation, will Shepard and the crew be able to save the day? And will they be able to stop the terrorists once the crew knows their target? Written for the 2013  Mass Effect Big Bang, with artist Te!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author Note: Just a heartfelt thanks to Te to putting up with me during this process, and for going above and beyond in terms of the art! Knowing that I was getting such amazing art was inspiration all on its own. And to Azzy and Bioticbooty for organizing this big bang!
> 
> Artist Note: Mass Effect Big Bang art master post for Danny’s ‘Tainted’. This story is amazing, and choosing just one moment to illustrate was hard enough that i decided to do a couple of smaller pictures instead. A huge thank you to the Azzy and Bioticbooty for organizing this big bang and even bigger thank you to Danny for letting me work with such a great piece of writing ~~and being extremely patient with me~~.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reuniting with (and meeting some of) the crew. Being with Shepard. They're both more difficult than Kaidan would have thought.

 

“So…Major now, huh?”

Kaidan was shaken out of the shock of seeing Shepard by the sound of Shepard’s low, teasing voice. It was strange, how familiar that little corner of Shepard’s lip was, how he remembered what it was like to be on the receiving end of it for months and how he remembered precisely how that corner of Shepard’s mouth tasted. He remembered exactly what it was like kissing that smirk awy, or kissing until the smirk became a full blown smile.

These were the thoughts that plagued him whenever he looked at Shepard. Either those thoughts or more painful ones. He wasn’t sure yet which thoughts were easier to cope with.

“Yeah…” Kaidan was proud of his accomplishments, but talking about them with Shepard didn’t feel right. There was no judgment from Shepard- he seemed happy for KAidan, proud, even- but Kaidan felt judged. He knew it meant that he had no one to blame for it but himself. Judging himself for the months without Shepard- for the months that he both regretted (he’d lost Shepard once, he couldn’t afford to lose that time with Shepard again) and knew he’d made the right choice about (it was Cerberus, for god’s sake, Shepard had joined up with Cerberus and Kaidan wasn’t even sure who Shepard was).

They were accomplishments made in lieu of being on the Normandy, with the crew and the commander that he belonged with. It was a double-edged blade.

Leaning against the open hatch into the Normandy, Shepard seemed to realize that they were frozen in awkwardness. Shepard pushed off the doorway and moved out onto the dock, to stand only inches away from Kaidan. Kaidan was proud of himself for not swallowing the lump that was threatening to form in his throat.

Shepard held out a hand. “It’s good to see you again, major.”

Kaidan laughed at the ridiculousness of a handshake, and he saw in Shepard’s eyes that he felt the same. But what else was there? After all, aside from a hastily (lie, read: carefully, painstakingly) constructed letter, they hadn’t left each other on good terms. There was still, even now, things that Shepard surely hadn’t told him, and there were things that Alliance regs dictated that Kaidan couldn’t tell Shepard. So a handshake it was, even as Kaidan tried to pull his eyes away from the warmth of Shepard’s lips.

They shook hands, Shepard’s grip just as memorable as everything else about him. “It’s good to see you too Shepard.” They didn’t let go, not right away, a beat passing before Kaidan finally released Shepard’s hand. It shouldn’t have been this difficult.

Or shouldn’t it have been? After all, each one of them had been through more than a dozen average men. Shepard had saved the universe- from Geth, from Cerberus-, had died and been brought back, had gone to the end of the line- more than one mission that he should have never managed to survive- and come out on top. His whole life was spent rebelling against all sorts of odds, without rest, without pause.

And Kaidan had his own struggles, too. He’d been there with Shepard for a chunk of all of that. He’d had to put himself back together after Shepard’s death, had to fight against falling back into the kind of dark place he’d thought he left behind years ago. He’d hadn’t fared nearly as well as Shepard; he’d kept himself level, but that was it, for a long time. It had been Anderson’s trust in him, and Hackett’s urgings that had gotten Kaidan through it. He’d gotten his promotion, he’d been running the 1st Special Operations Biotic Company for awhile now- and he was good at his job, and his squad was a good squad…

But his squad should have been, had to be, Shepard’s squad. That’s where his heart had always belonged. And so of course seeing Shepard again was going to be difficult, was going to be a rocky road uphill. They had too much they weren’t working out yet.

“I heard about the Collector base,” Kaidan said. It was the wrong topic to bring up, Kaidan knew that right away from the guarded, prepared to be defensive look on Shepard’s face. Kaidan cleared his throat. “That was good work.” _I should have trusted you to make the right decision in the end,_ Kaidan said _, but I couldn_ _’t watch you make all those bad ones. I couldn’t be a party to them._ Shepard had to understand that, right?

“So you didn’t say in your message what brings you down to the Normandy.” Shepard looked curious, as if he wasn’t sure yet how much emotion they were going to be getting into. A slight frown, a slight creasing of his brow, but he kept his eyes tied to Kaidan’s. He was about as likely to look away as Kaidan was, at any rate. “Not that I’m not glad to see you.”

“Admiral Hackett didn’t-” Kaidan started, interrupted by a beep on Shepard’s omni-tool. Shepard looked apologetic; Kaidan gestured towards the tool. “Don’t mind me. You’ve got work to do.”

Shepard checked his omni-tool, and Kaidan watched the orange light of it frame Shepard’s face. “Speaking of Hackett, looks like I’ve got an incoming. I’ve got to go talk to him-” Shepard powered down his omni-tool and hesitated, before turning back to Kaidan with a smile. “If you’ve got some time…don’t go anywhere, okay? I want to catch up.”

Kaidan started to open his mouth to say something, but Shepard was already on the move. When Shepard was out of sight, he let out a long breath. Admiral Hackett hadn’t spoken to him yet. Kaidan had assumed that Hackett- or even Anderson- would have said something to Shepard all ready.

“Shit,” Kaidan muttered under his breath, before making his way into the Normandy.

Even though they were both on Earth for the moment, Admiral Hackett, unlike Admiral Anderson, rarely stepped foot onto the Normandy. Shepard didn’t expect him to- Hackett was juggling a hundred things at once, and that wasn’t including the military magic he was doing to keep Shepard helming a ship that, by all rights, should have been taken from him. That by all laws and regulations shouldn’t belong to Shepard since long before the events on the collector base.

Admiral Hackett was still in constant contact with Shepard. He had to be for this ‘plan’ of his- if it could even be called a plan- could work. He’d had Shepard in constant action since the fall of the collector base, and even this short stop on Earth was more than Hackett really felt comfortable with. Shepard understood, but it was still nice to see Earth, even if only for a short period of time.

For a moment, on the way to the comm room, Shepard thought about what it would be like to be grounded, to be stuck on Earth while the Alliance council doled out whatever punishment they saw fit for him. He spent a lot of time thinking about things like that recently, and each time he thought about it, the situation was less and less abhorrent to him.

After letting EDI know that he was ready to receive Hackett’s communication, Shepard stood in front of Hackett’s holographic form, all blue and green flickering grid work. “Admiral Hackett, sir,” Shepard greeted.

Even in holo-form, Admiral Hackett’s normal severity made it’s way through. Shepard knew that it was nothing personal; that was Hackett, that was how he’d made it to being an Admiral. Still, every time that face popped up, Shepard braced himself for being told that the gig was up. All the last chance appeals and plans had fallen through. It was time to give up the Normandy and stop fighting.

Every time, however, Hackett surprised him. “I’ve got another mission for you, Shepard. I need a pair of eyes I can trust. We’re getting strange hails from a freighter out by Cartagena station.”

“Batarian raiders?” Shepard filled in. Cartagena was as far out as civilization reached in the Abyss. It was a functioning space station by technicality; it was a shitstain on the universe that reminded Shepard, from what little experience he had with the station, of the neighborhood he’d grown up in on Earth, just with a higher chance of Batarians taking slaves and hostages. It wasn’t unlikely to hear about that sort of problem on Cartagena.

Beyond that, it wasn’t a particularly new problem. It was a problem for C-Pat, Cartagena’s- admittedly poor- security. It wasn’t the work of a warship like the Normandy, and it wasn’t the work that an Admiral should be involved in. Why he was sending Shepard to deal with a distress call at the end of the galaxy, Shepard didn’t know.

“It’s not clear,” Hackett answered. “But my guy tells me that there’s something more to this hail than a simple hostage taking situation to get C-Pat to listen to Batarians. The hail was automatically sent, and it wasn’t sent to C-Pat. The hail was intercepted by a listening post, and on a frequency that we’ve previously encountered before.”

Shepard crossed his arms and raised his eyebrow. “Where?”

“Do you remember that group of L2 terrorists from a few years back? When the hostage situation popped up?” That was barely specific, although Shepard didn’t say that. Shepard had encountered the groups of biotic terrorists more than once, those who wanted either reparations or revenge for the agony they’d been put through regarding both L2 implants and biotic training in general. It was a rough situation- it was always rough, coming up against the ghosts of the Alliance’s failures. “It was on the same frequency as when they announced the hostage situation and made their demands.”

That, at least, made it a little more evident why Shepard would be called in to deal with the situation. Batarian raids were C-Pat’s problem, not the Alliance military’s. The terrorists were a group that Shepard had experience with. “I thought that the group had mostly dissolved, Admiral.”

“That’s what we thought,” was the reply. “But recent reports show some activity…we think that the threat of the collectors made them quiet for awhile- threats to the whole of humanity can do that to a group. But once the situation is under control…” The situation wasn’t yet fully under control, and Hackett and Shepard knew that, even if the Citadel Council and the Alliance council wanted to deny that. “Then you get groups like this again. I need you to go investigate what happened there, and report back to me any findings.”

“Yes sir.” Shepard waited for a beat before asking, “Admiral, is there any word on my situation?”

Hackett sighed, shaking his head. “Anderson and I are still doing everything we can. I told you this wouldn’t be easy. We just need to keep you busy and out in the field until things are settled.” Shepard must have looked unconvinced. “Shepard, you’re a good soldier. A great one. But you knew that the things you do while with Cerberus, even the things that were necessary- they would be enough to put you in prison. The destruction of the Batarian system alone should have you in shackles.”

“I’m not denying that sir,” Shepard told him. If anything, now, Shepard welcomed that prospect. Being called to answer for his crimes, being able to defend his actions in front of the whole of the alliance, that was better than playing this game. Hackett kept him busy, with any ‘strange’ investigation that the Alliance might be able to find for him to do, because the second he stopped moving, the moment that it seemed like he couldn’t currently be of use to the Alliance, they would lock him up.

Hackett and Anderson both were trying to help him, and he knew and appreciated that fact. They were using old political and military ties to try to get Shepard pardoned, but as far as Shepard could see, nothing short of an attack would turn the tide in his favor- and that wasn’t what he wanted. What he wanted was to move forward; and this wasn’t it, traveling and doing crap work with an alliance babysitter on board, while his crew stayed and waited with the exact same tension building on ship that was in his head. It wasn’t right.

“Then let us help you, Shepard,” Hackett told him sternly. “And you can do that by helping me.”

Shepard nodded. “Understood.” Understood, but Shepard wasn’t sure if it was entirely wanted anymore.

“How is Lieutenant Vega working out, by the way?” Hackett asked. “I read his reports regularly, but I want to know from you. He’s a good soldier. Seen a lot.”

“I think some of my crew makes him uneasy,” Shepard admitted. “Some of my methods. But other than that, he’s a good man.” Alliance babysitter or not, James Vega was still technically under Shepard’s command while he was on the ship, and Shepard’d had to put him in his place a few times. There was no reason to bother Hackett with that, however; Shepard had practice putting Krogan in line, so an antsy Alliance soldier was no problem.

“Good. I’m sure he’ll keep up the good work, but I don’t know if he’s got the right experience for him to be your go to on this investigation.”

“ _Now_ I’m not sure whether I understand, Admiral.”

“If we’re right, you’re about to be up against a group of angry L2 biotics. I’d rather you have someone with you who’s focus is more biotics oriented.” Shepard had Jack, he thought, but then immediately dismissed the thought of her being his go to biotic on this. After all, the scars from her testing were far from healed, and she’d go into the situation trigger-happy. It was the worst possible combination for a possible hostage situation. Jacob and Miranda, with their Cerberus ties- even though they were in the past- left the ship once Shepard was working for the Alliance again. Samara had her duties as Justicar to attend to, and Shepard had no desire to push his luck trying to convince her to stay. He really was low on biotic teammates, for the first time in a long, long time. “So I’ve assigned Major Alenko to split duties with the lieutenant.” Shepard uncrossed his arms and stared. “He should arrive tomorrow.” Kaidan was _assigned_ to the Normandy? He hadn’t said a word to Shepard about it.

_Admiral Hackett didn_ _’t say…_ Or maybe he’d tried, and the timing had been bad. Shepard cleared his throat. “He’s, uh…early, sir. Reported in to the Normandy only a few minutes ago.”

“Good,” Admiral Hackett nodded. “If he’s there, then you can start on the way to Cartagena as soon as you’re done refueling. Keep me in the loop, Shepard, and I’ll hail you the moment we have any more information about your situation. Hackett out.” The holo-lattice work flickered once more before blinking out of existence.

Shepard stood there for a minute, trying to sort out how he felt about everything. About the excuse that Hackett was using to keep him in the air, about Kaidan being back under his command, about a hundred other issues weighing on him. Then he took a deep breath, shook his head, and went to go see his crew.

After all, he still had a job to do.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Waiting for Shepard, Kaidan found himself in the mess hall, and he knew what that meant.

The current crew wasn’t the full team that had traveled with Shepard since Cerberus. The Cerberus people had left so as not to deal with the Alliance. A few other squadmates had left too- Kaidan only knew _of_ those squadmates, mostly from vids and newsfeed and information that he was privy to as the head of a covert operations unit. He knew that there had been, apparently, a Geth that had traveled with Shepard. He knew about the thief and the mercenary, and the assassin. But the ones who’d left weren’t the ones staring him down right now.

Some of them, Kaidan knew, and knew well. Chakwas, Tali and Garrus all had given him good solid hugs as greetings- although Garrus had teased Kaidan a little, and promised that more was in store. It was a bit like old family, and he was happy to be back with them. If they held his loyalty to the Alliance against him, they didn’t speak on it, a fact which Kaidan appreciated whole-heartedly.

The scientist Mordin had seemed nice enough, if a bit much for Kaidan to take at once. Mordin had instantly dived into asking Kaidan about his implants, and the stress on his body, and it was only through intervention from Chakwas that he’d backed off. Kaidan didn’t think he meant any harm by it, and held none of the first impression against him.

Grunt was…he didn’t seem to care about Kaidan one way or another, except to size him up and instantly deem him small and non-threatening. Kaidan couldn’t help but be a little offended at that- but it wasn’t as if he was going to start a fight with a Krogan to prove that he was worth being paid attention to.

The real trouble seemed like it was going to be Jack. She was annoyed by Kaidan’s presence the second he was introduced- ‘Look, another neutered Alliance soldier. At least Vega’s interesting…you look like they just took you out of the packaging.” It was harsh, and Kaidan wasn’t expecting it, but maybe he should have. She was a familiar face from Horizon- she’d stood next to Shepard when Kaidan had stumbled back in shock at the Cerberus soldier at his other shoulder. As far as she could tell, since she hadn’t been their for their first run ins with Cerberus, he’d abandoned Shepard.

She mostly glared at him when they were introduced, using her biotics to make an inverted pyramid of cups stand upright on the table. If she wasn’t glaring, she looked bored- Kaidan got the idea that the only reason she didn’t leave the table was because she was waiting for word from Shepard too.

“-Kaidan, please tell me you’re not still using that awful pistol,” Garrus was saying. “The latest model makes that thing look like a paper weight, really.”

Kaidan shrugged. “I like it. It’s been through the worst. Reliable.”

“It’s _ancient_ ,” Garrus argued.

“So’s he, so it’s a nice little match up,” Jack muttered.

Kaidan raised his eyebrow. “I’m about the same age as Shepard.”

“You should hear the jokes she makes about me, then.” The small group looked up as Shepard made it to the table. “According to Jack, I need a walker to get me through battle.” Jack smirked, but she managed to make her smirk still feel like a baring of teeth. Kaidan couldn’t help but feel like he recognized the attitude, the territorial behavior. She wasn’t the first person that he’d met with that same air- put Shepard in a bad mood and he could be pretty similar.

“What’s with the new babysitter,” Jack asked. “What, the Alliance think Vega’s not doing his job right?”

Shepard shook his head. “Kaidan is _not_ here to babysit,” he assured her. Kaidan didn’t speak; he was pretty sure part of his job was to babysit, but only by technicality. “He’s here to help out on this next job. We needed his expertise.”

“I hope you’re not looking for weapon’s expertise,” Garrus drawled sardonically. “You’ll find yourself sorely disappointed.”

Shepard rolled his eyes and explained the upcoming investigation. He told the crew about the strange distress signal, and filled in a few of the blanks in terms of the history of the biotic terrorists. He reminded them about the greviences the L2 biotics had with the Parliament Subcommittee on Transhuman Studies, and their attack on a Sirta research station. Kaidan remembered having debates with other biotics about the ethics of the terrorists, and remembered back when they were in the news far more frequently.

He’d heard this information already, he knew the briefing fairly well, but he listened intently all the same.

“So what,” Jack asked. “We think some of these guys fucked up and now the Alliance wants us to go save them? Or are we thinking that Alliance wants us to take them out?”

Kaidan couldn’t help but ask, “Which one would you prefer?”

“Don’t start thinking I feel _sorry_ for these guys,” Jack sneered. “If they wanted to be taken seriously, they should have just gone and wrecked shit. They couldn’t back up their threats, so fuck ‘em. I could care less about some L2s- none of them give a shit about me.” Kaidan bit down the urge to say that he was an L2- he doubted that she would care very much.

“I don’t know what we’re going to find when we’re there,” Shepard admitted. “We might not find anything- it might be a waste of our time, or it may turn out to be a trap…which honestly, is probably the most likely. So we go in there prepared.” They all nodded. “Garrus, Kaidan, you’re going on the freighter with me. It’ll be Jack, Tali, and James on backup.”

“Bull _shit_ ,” Jack cut in, her biotic-held pyramid of cups tumbling down as she stopped paying attention to it. “Why do I get benched, just ‘cause-”

“You’re benched because I say you’re benched,” Shepard interjected sharply. While casual for most of the brief, he held himself soldier-firm now, throwing Jack a sharp and scolding look. She wasn’t happy, but she kept quiet once he began to talk. Kaidan had a feeling that her stormy look was what passed for respect with her. “You’re my big guns, Jack. Big explosion- this is a smaller job. Trust me, the second I need something wrecked, you’ll be the first out the gate.” She still wasn’t pleased, but she sulked instead of arguing.

Shepard exhaled heavily. “Now, if there aren’t anymore questions, we’re about to make the jump through the nearest relay to Cartagena in less than twenty. Dismissed.” Everyone either relaxed or started to get up. “Kaidan, my quarters.” Kaidan raised an eyebrow at him questioningly. “It’s not an order, but we do need to talk. ASAP.”

Kaidan nodded. It was better to do this now than later, he told himself.

* * *

The short elevator trip was quiet, with a single exception. “I asked to be here,” Kaidan said softly. “I wasn’t assigned.”

Shepard turned to look at Kaidan with an indecipherable look on his face, eyes narrowed as he processed Kaidan’s words. He didn’t respond, instead just turning away as the elevator opened onto Shepard’s quarters.

Once the door closed behind them, however, Shepard went right to business. “I meant it, when I said it was good to see you again.” He turned around to face Kaidan as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t being polite.”

“You never were good at polite, Shepard,” Kaidan commented. “So I didn’t assume that’s what you were going for.” He tried a small smile for size, and when Shepard responded in kind, it grew a little, as did Kaidan’s boldness. “I meant what I said too.” He wanted to go sit next to Shepard, but decided against it. Shepard had asked him to join up over a year ago, and Kaidan had turned it down. Now Kaidan was back, but it was still Shepard’s ship. Shepard’s rules…he’d wait for Shepard to make the next move.

That left the couch as Kaidan’s good place to sit, so he settled down into it. He turned just enough that he was looking at Shepard directly. It had been a long time since they’d sat together, and a long time since the distance felt this wide.

“Yeah, about that…” Shepard shook his head. “Why now?” The unspoken _I could have used you_ was clear. “No offense, but I’m probably the safest I’ve been in a long time, so it can’t be that you were worried about me out there.”

“It can’t?” Kaidan echoed. He leaned back on the couch, rubbing his temple with two fingers. “I know you can take care of yourself. I know you’ve got a few really good people around you.” He couldn’t say that he trusted everyone that Shepard brought around, but Shepard had pulled out of it in the end. Had managed to pull loyalty from even most of the enemy. It was a gift of his. “That doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

“So you’re here because you’re still worried?” Shepard prodded. Where Kaidan leaned back, Shepard rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward intently. “You could have sent me an message besides the one from yesterday. You could have gotten in contact with me the second I blew the collector base, but you _didn_ _’t_. You picked now- you went to Admiral Hackett and requested to be placed on my ship again, Kaidan, when you have your own squad and your own troubles. Why?”

Shepard did not dance around things; no, it was always Kaidan that avoided, that hinted. Kaidan lowered his head as he considered his next words very carefully. He’d thought about this confrontation more than a few times, about how it would pan out for the both of them. He’d come up with five different speeches about the when and why, filling in the blanks of his decision making process. The planning just meant that he had a jumble of words caught in his throat, none of which sounded right.

So he winged it. “Shepard I…when I turned down your invitation, there was a lot going on.”

“I know. I read your letter.”

At least there was that, although Shepard hadn’t responded to it. “I was only just getting over one of the roughest times in my life- and that was your death. Suddenly, there you were, in front of me, but it’s Cerberus’ doing. Cerberus, who I thought we were both in agreement was the enemy.” Kaidan laughed without mirth. “One of the enemies. I’ve heard about what they did to put you together, from the debriefs you gave Hackett and Anderson. This Project Lazarus? For all I knew, you were an AI, or conditioned by Cerberus or had some behavioral modification chip or…” He shook his head, running through all the scenarios that had kept him up for days at a time. “We both had our battles to fight, Shepard. And I thought…it’s not that I thought that you switched sides on us. I’ve always trusted you. Always.”

“You just didn’t trust that I _was_ me,” Shepard filled in. Kaidan nodded. “What changed your mind, Kaidan?”

“Everything you ended up doing,” Kaidan answered honestly. “You’ve got a way about you. It’s more than just being in command. Every one of those people you recruited- you got turians and asari and salarians to side with Cerberus, for Christ’s sake, you got a quarian and a geth to work with each other- they were willing to lay down their lives. Not just for the mission, but for you.” Kaidan shrugged, and his smile was sadder this time, heavier. “I know what that feels like, Shepard. And I know only one man that’s ever made me feel that way. There was no way that you were a clone or a fake, not if you could lead them to death and pull every single one of them back out of hell with you. That’s how I knew.”

Shepard clasped his hands loosely as he thought over Kaidan’s words. Kaidan was a little embarrassed at himself for being so wordy, but everything he said was true. He still felt the same. “That still doesn’t explain why you waited this long, Kaidan.” Shepard’s voice was contemplative, a little distant, and Kaidan wasn’t sure if it was because he was intentionally keeping himself distant or because he was lost in thought.

“I waited because I thought I screwed up my chance. As a crew member, as a friend…” Kaidan shrugged. “As more than that, whatever we were. And then, the longer I waited to hear what the council was going to do, the more I started wondering…” Kaidan paused, cleared his throat. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’ve done a lot of things that I really wish I could take back. After Jump Zero, I nearly destroyed my own life living with the aftermath of my mistakes there. Before I signed up for the military, all the things that I did, because I didn’t want to face the decisions I’d made? I probably would have died if it had lasted much longer. When you died…I almost…” _Say it_ , Kaidan told himself. _Say relapsed. Say died. Say self-destructed._ “I nearly fell apart. And I started thinking to myself- could I really live with a mistake like _this_ on my shoulders? If you were put on trial, if you were found guilty, could I be okay knowing I never stood by your side? Never tried to be here again?” Kaidan shook his head no. “I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t keep living without you.”

Silence hung in the air, and Kaidan couldn’t help but think of all the worst case scenarios that could be about to happen. He’d abandoned Shepard when he needed all the best people he could get. Kaidan had fallen apart once, twice, three times, and now he was burdening Shepard with that knowledge- knowledge Shepard didn’t need, although Kaidan had danced around telling him it for a long time. He didn’t know what came next, except for an inevitable rejection, and maybe Shepard telling him that he didn’t need that kind of stress on the ship. He already had enough on his plate.

Shepard exhaled heavily as he finally pushed himself off the bed. He took the few, short steps towards Kaidan’s seat, and sat on the coffee table instead of on the couch, directly in front of Kaidan. He took Kaidan’s hand from his temple- had Kaidan really been rubbing his temple for that long? He’d barely noticed- and held it between his own.

“Kaidan, I’m going to be here regardless of what you do,” he said somberly. “I’ve got a war to fight- a war to win. The Reapers are still out there, even if Hackett has me running around doing errands for the moment. I’m not going to rest anytime soon.” Kaidan didn’t see where Shepard was going with this, but his hand was warm and familiar. “But I’d rather do it with people I trust. People I love.” There was an emphasis there that Kaidan wasn’t expecting to hear. Wasn’t expecting to be offered so freely. “There is no one on this ship I want here more than you.”

“Not even Garrus?” Kaidan joked.

“Well, Garrus is really good shot, to be fair,” Shepard retorted, and they both laughed. The laughter trailed off slowly, and with it some of the weight that Kaidan was carrying on his shoulders. He hoped that some of the weight on Shepard’s eased too. “But seriously, Kaidan. I’m glad you’re here. Whatever the reason. If you trust me, if you’ve got my back, I know we can do this.”

Shepard could have let go of Kaidan’s hands there, and it would have been okay. He didn’t though, just like he didn’t pull his gaze from Kaidan’s. There was no doubt there- and Kaidan couldn’t doubt Shepard, not when he was sure that it was Shepard in front of him.  He couldn’t doubt where he belonged, either.

“Then I guess we’ve got some terrorist ass to kick,” Kaidan said.

Shepard shrugged. “I doubt it’s going to be that interesting, Kaidan. Most of these run around jobs have been just that. Running around.”


	3. Chapter 3

The freighter hallway was thick with batarian shock troopers. There were enough of them that Shepard grinned crookedly, the sort of smile that tempted Kaidan with the idea that maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with enjoying justified violence every now and again. The sort of smile that hit somewhere in Kaidan’s gut, and would have settled there, were it not for the fact that they were under heavy fire.

Who was he kidding? The adrenaline, the being this close to Shepard, the buzz and pull of his abilities…the feeling settled.

Fortunately, Kaidan was used to handling those particular feelings under extreme circumstances. He’s only thrown off by the fact that he hasn’t felt that way in a long while, and even then only for a brief moment, in between the smirk and the next time Kaidan had to fire a shot, but in that moment, it felt good.

The whole mission had gotten exciting almost immediately. EDI analyzed the signal as they got closer- it did, in fact, appear to be from biotic terrorists. There wasn’t a single human alive on the ship when the squad had arrived, however. A couple of bodies, but beyond that, batarian pirates had overrun the ship. Far more pirates than needed for a simple raid on a freighter, Kaidan thought, but maybe they were a second wave- the reason wasn’t important until the squad was safe.

He was crouched behind a crate, waiting for Shepard to motion for him to move forward. Garrus was a little ways back, backing them up. Every few seconds, another batarian’s head would jerk back like a tossed rag doll before their whole body would collapse.

Garrus and Shepard had always been good, but now? Now they were better. Not that Kaidan was dragging the team down any; he’d spent his time in the Alliance improving his biotics, his skills. He was well aware of the war that was on the horizon, and had wanted to be prepared.

He yanked his submachine gun off his back and came out of hiding, firing at a few of the shock troopers who were shooting to split him and the other two in half. Even before Kaidan was able to dip back down into hiding, he felt a shot connect with his armor. His shield absorbed the hit, the area around his armor heating up rapidly.

Cursing, Kaidan focused in order to pull the energy around him close, forming his barrier before another shotgun blast hit. There were still enough batarians in the hall that the squad couldn’t move forward yet; it seemed that for every one downed, another took its place.

“Fuck this,” Shepard snarled over the comms. Kaidan ducked back into cover. “We’ve gotta clear us a path and quick.”

“I thought that was what we’ve been doing, Shepard,” Garrus commented, his voice surprisingly calm, even with the force of adrenaline behind it. Kaidan always guessed it was a sniper thing; every sniper he’d ever known acted like they were in another world when they were viewing things through the gun sight. “Do you have a better idea?”

Kaidan stood again and pushed hard with both his mind and his arm, moving the dark energy as fast as he could, freezing one of the batarians in place as his biotics pulled the life from it and slowly helped heal him. Garrus fired one shot quickly afterwards, dropping the batarian like a stone.

“Don’t I always?” came Shepard’s response. Out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan could see that Shepard was smirking again. That would end up being a problem, Kaidan was sure of it.

“Planning on sharing it, Shepard?” The words flew out of Kaidan’s mouth automatically as he kept firing, and it really did feel like old times. Maybe that was why Shepard had decided to bring Garrus and Kaidan instead of any other crew member; all three of them knew this, knew each other. It was a well-oiled squad, to use an archaic term.

Well-oiled or not, though, they were still pinned to this side of the hallway. Kaidan hoped Shepard had a better plan than ‘blow it all to shit.’

“Two weeks after Sovereign,” Shepard said while switching to a shotgun. “The Asari pirates. Remember that?”

“I remember one of them asking you out after wards,” Garrus answered. “But I have a feeling that _that_ wasn’t what you were referring to.” Both Shepard and Kaidan managed to snort at that, even as they both ducked into cover. The barrier that Kaidan had thrown up was weak after absorbing so many shots, and if he knew Shepard, the Commander was probably waiting until the very last minute to take care of himself.

“Not what I meant.” Kaidan could hear the cocky grin in Shepard’s voice. “But I’m glad you remember that part too. I meant the little trick we pulled to stop them.”

Kaidan frowned, and it took him a beat to remember what Shepard meant. “This is a small hallway, Commander. Are you sure a move like that won’t just blow us to shit along with the batarians?”

“Nope.” At least Shepard was honest. “On three?”

“Roger that.” Garrus answered.

“One.”

Kaidan took a deep breath and focused himself, pulling back his arms as he started to yank together the dark energy around the batarian mercenaries. The batarians bristled at the rising energies, and started to shoot with a renewed vigor, as if they could sense that Kaidan was putting extra effort in.

“Two.” Shepard pulled his unwieldy- unwieldy to Kaidan, anyway, since Shepard carried the thing around like it was a slightly weighty backpack- grenade launcher off of his back and got ready to aim it, lifting it a little higher than the batarians. A place for Kaidan to aim.

“Three!” With that, Kaidan heard the all-too-satisfying hiss and sizzle and screams that happened when Garrus overloaded the batarians’ suits. Simultaneously, Kaidan threw his arms upwards, hurling the batarians as high as the ceiling would allow. They were in the exact firing range of Shepard’s grenade launcher.

Which Shepard fired at the exact same time as Kaidan and Garrus did their parts. The grenade flew straight towards the other end of the hallway, where the batarians were held, essentially frying in their suits, suspended in midair. The results were more satisfying than the noises from the batarians; every gun that had been firing at them fell silent. It was a false silence; the reverberations from the shootout still buzzed in Kaidan’s ear like the sound of electronics.

Kaidan didn’t like it, but it damn sure felt good to be left standing. He blamed the elation on Shepard and Garrus both- more Shepard than anything. Conditioning from his time traveling with them, he told himself.

He could tell himself that as many times as he wanted, but he knew that wasn’t one hundred percent true. If anything, that feeling was why he worked so well with them.

Or why, at least, in the electric buzzing silence of the freighter, he found himself chewing his lip and thinking about old traditions after fights, when they’d gotten back to the Normandy and debriefing was done. Trying to not think about how Shepard’s body moved, even in his armor, and all sorts of thoughts that were going to make him lose focus if he wasn’t careful.

It was just because he wasn’t used to it. And it had been a long time since he’d gotten any, to be fair.

Garrus’s low chuckle pulled Kaidan out of his thoughts. The sound was more of an exhalation than a sound of joy. “That worked wonders, Shepard. Nicely done.”

Shepard put the grenade launcher back on his back and shrugged, replacing it in his hands with his assault rifle. “Wasn’t my idea. Originally, anyway.” At Garrus and Kaidan’s quizzical looks, he grinned. “During that pirate raid, it wasn’t me who came up with that one.”

“Frankly, I wasn’t paying attention to who came up with what,” Garrus replied.

“ _You_ weren’t keeping score, Garrus?” Kaidan snorted. “Somehow, I don’t buy that.”

Before Garrus could respond, Shepard interjected, rolling his eyes. “That was Kaidan’s idea.” As soon as Shepard spoke of course, Kaidan remembered. It wasn’t a particularly clever maneuver- hit the bad guys all at once with everything wasn’t the work of a strategic mastermind then and it certainly didn’t qualify as that now- but it had saved their asses when they were cornered before, and apparently it had done so again.

And almost as importantly, it was a room worth remembering, at least to Shepard. A silly thought that Kaidan only didn’t squash because he was too busy listening to his heart pounding in his ears. When the adrenaline faded, Kaidan knew that a headache would come on full force for pushing that hard. For now, though, for now he could follow his squad commander’s lead.

Relief. A bit of arrogance from the adrenaline rush. A smidgen of arousal from watching Shepard fight and fighting alongside him. Another tally in the win column. All familiar feelings when siding with Shepard.

“Well, whoever thought it up,” and there was no malice in Garrus’ dismissal, only an awareness that they weren’t finished with what they needed to do, “it was a solid idea.”

“Agreed,” Shepard stated, throwing a looking Kaidan’s way, that clearly wasn’t intended for the group. Shepard must’ve been thinking about the same thing that Kaidan was. It was only for a flash, however, and just as quickly as the look had been given, Shepard was all business again. “We don’t know how many batarians are left on this ship, and I’d rather not get caught with my hand down my pants. Let’s go see what’s such a big deal that the raiders were still here.”

Garrus nodded. “I’m dying to find out, myself.”

Shepard led the way down the corridor. In spite of the fact that Shepard couldn’t hack a door to save his life- and so either Kaidan or Garrus would have to do it for him- Shepard always insisted on being in front. Kaidan wasn’t sure whether it was because Shepard didn’t feel like he was doing his job bringing up the rear, whether Shepard just liked kicking down shit and opening fire first, or some combination of the two.

Either way, when they got to the door at the end of the corridor, he gestured to one of the rooms. “Kaidan, get this lock open.” Garrus and Shepard stood on either side of the door as Kaidan started to work. As soon as they got close to the door, their armors signaled that their combat sensors were being jammed. Shepard’s mouth pressed into a firm line, giving another quick nod Garrus’s way. Garrus readied his assault rifle; Kaidan prepared himself to push or pull at the dark energies even as he quickly hacked the door’s security.

The door slid open with a jerk, and all three of them pointed their guns at the batarians that were now pointing guns at them. Apparently, a few of them must have been smart enough to lay low, but weren’t smart enough to just stop fighting and surrender. Kaidan let off a few shots automatically, pausing only long enough to life on batarian high and toss him at the wall.

Garrus switched to comm communication so as not to announce his plans to he batarians. “I don’t suppose we’ve got another one of those pirate plans, do we?”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I can’t pull off a throw of quite that size again so soon,” Kaidan admitted. A batarian charged at him, and he barely had time to pull up his shield before the batarian hit him, full force with the entirety of his body. Kaidan fell back, and didn’t have time to recover before the batarian pulled back an arm and pistol-whipped Kaidan. There wasn’t enough room for Kaidan’s head to jerk back, and it took him a moment to put his gun to the batarian’s stomach and pull the trigger.

The batarian’s armor kept the blast from killing the mercenary, but it was enough to force him off of Kaidan, who rolled to the side, and quickly scrambled up, popping off a few more shots into the batarian’s head before the heat clip ran out. Kaidan cursed to himself and ran to cover, reloading his gun as he did so.

It wasn’t that there were too many batarians, because there weren’t. There wasn’t even half the number of mercs in this room as there had been in the hallway. But this room was a small bunk, with nothing but close walls and a few crates. The batarians also didn’t hesitate to use their biotics at close range, something that Kaidan didn’t do very often. He preferred to force distance, but there was only so much distance in the room to begin with. Close quarters was really more of Shepard’s game.

Garrus might have adjusted by turning his rifle around and bludgeoning people with it, but Shepard wasn’t even making the pretense of using the gun grip. He’d just disarmed the batarian that had lunged at him, almost literally; Kaidan could hear the crack of bone in spite of the rest of the nise in the room.

Shepard head-butted the batarian, dropping it to the floor before stomping down and snapping its neck when it tried, lamely, to make a grab for Shepard.

Close quarters or no, Kaidan preferred the sort of fight that kept his opponent at arm’s length, and was using what little room there was a toss batarian or two backwards into the crates. One of the batarians got the jump on him, though, a simple flinging motion on its part throwing Kaidan to the side, barreling into Shepard. Kaidan heard the sound of Shepard’s head hitting one of the crates. “Fuck, Shepard, are you-”

“I’m _fine_ ,” came the rumbling grunt from practically underneath Kaidan. The tone was more aggravated than hurt. “Just point me at that asshole.”

“I think I can make that happen,” Kaidan said between teeth, annoyed at not having braced himself better. He moved off of Shepard quickly, and- even faster than Kaidan remembered him being able to do so- Shepard un-holstered his pistol, aiming it straight for the batarian that had thrown them, fired several shots straight into its head, and killed it.

And then, almost as quickly as the attack began, Kaidan found himself punching and then shooting the last of the batarians that had attacked him.

“Impressive,” Garrus intoned.

“Not looking to impress,” Shepard replied. He rolled his shoulders. Wearing a visor, not a helmet, it was easy to see that Shepard’s lip had been split in the fray, his face just the slightest bit roughed up by a few lucky shots a batarian must have gotten in. Kaidan bit the inside of his cheek; was it so bad that seeing Shepard like this, fresh from combat and shaking it off as if it was an annoyance, was seeing Shepard at his best? Shepard caught the look, and raised a hand to his lip carefully. Looking at his hand, and back at Kaidan, it was clear he realized why Kaidan was staring. He smirked knowingly.

“At least, I’m not trying to impress you, Garrus.” He didn’t allow Kaidan the chance to respond. “I just wanna know what’s so important on this damned ship. If I never see another batarian, it’ll be too soon.” Garrus made a noise of agreement, and the squad did a quick perusal of the room, going through the crates in order to find anything suspicious. When they didn’t find anything, the three soldiers made their way into the other rooms, finding most of them just as unimpressive.

While they searched, though, Kaidan couldn’t help but ask the important question. “So Commander…” Shepard glanced up from the crates he was scanning with his omnitool. “If not Garrus, who _were_ you trying to impress?”

Shepard snorted. “The dead batarians, _Major_ ,” he drawled. “Who do you think?”

“Do I need to check to see if there’s anything suspicious in the bathroom, you two?” Garrus jokingly chided. “How is it that gunfire and the stench of batarian armor doesn’t seem to interfere with your ability to-”

“Do you want an actual answer to that, Vakarian?” Shepard questioned. He frowned for a moment while reading the information on his omnitool, but the moment passed quickly. “Because I can give you the answer, but I think you’ll end up knowing more about me and the major than you want to.” Kaidan would have blushed if there was anyone else but Shepard and Garrus in the room, but really, Garrus had heard plenty of things about him by now.

“On second thought, let’s pretend I didn’t ask, and that you’re not willing to tell me.”

“Sorry to interrupt this little educational session,” Kaidan spoke up, “but is anyone else getting unusually high eezo readings all over these crates? Like, alarmingly high?” The data that was on Kaidan’s omni tool didn’t make much sense. Eezo was usually everywhere- especially on ships. But the amount of on and around the crates was even more than there should have been.

Shepard nodded. “I’m seeing the same thing. Let’s open up one of these things and see what’s what.”

A quick scan of the remaining crates, and it was easy to see that one of the crates had an even higher reading of element zero than the others. The coded lock on the crate wasn’t difficult for Kaidan to hack, but still more than what should have been required for simple supplies. Shepard and Garrus stayed a few steps back while he opened the crate up.

He expected weapons. Even with the amount of element zero showing up in scans, the presence of the batarians and the way that they’d defended the already scavenged freighter, a shipment of weapons wouldn’t have been unheard of. It would have made the most sense, really. After that, Kaidan’s automatic assumption was a shipment of element zero in dust form, the same form that his mother had been exposed to at birth. Rare for it to be moved across the galaxy like this, but it was still possible.

What he didn’t expect was what he actually found. Long tubes of a substance that resembled dust-form eezo, if someone had managed to partially-bleach the eezo. There was the slightest buzz and hum of a thin barrier of dark matter around the tubes. Each of the tubes were connected to one another via long, thin tubing on both ends. It was a chain of ten tubes laying across the top of the crate, and the end tubes went down into holes in the casing that was preventing them from rolling around.

“This looks…different,” Garrus commented.

“Either of ever seen eezo that looks like this before?” Shepard asked, already signaling up to the Normandy and transmitting an image of what was in front of them to EDI and Mordin.

Garrus shook his head. “I saw a lot of red sand shipments- I saw a lot of eezo shipments- on Omega. Nothing that looked like this. Are we sure that our omni-tools are reading this correctly?”

“We’re reading it right,” Kaidan said, carefully checking to see if there was a way to move the first layer of tubes to see what they were connected to underneath. There had to be a switch or a button somewhere on the inside of the case. He carefully ran his fingers-still armored, of course- along the inside top of the case. “The only things that read like element zero are element zero and its derivatives. So if this isn’t eezo, it’s something made from it…” Kaidan cleared his throat. “Like red sand.”

For a moment he was distracted again, this time not thinking about Shepard. He could do the math in his head easily; this many crates of anything resembling red sand, multiplied by the usual street prices (he still _knew_ that, after all this time, and that was frustrating enough in and of itself). That was a lot of credits to have sitting around.

Biotic terrorists shipping eezo could make sense, if looked at in a certain light, and it was easy enough to see why batarian raiders would be interested in a shipment like that. Thinking about the possibilities, Kaidan accidentally dropped his arm slightly, and it hit the buzzing barrier of one of the tubes. He cursed under his breath, but the buzzing brought him back to what he was doing.

Why was he being so continuously distracted? He scowled. One of the corners of the top of the crate was raised, so Kaidan pried at it. The inside casing came off, it revealed two more tubes.

And a small explosive, that was ticking away. “I’ve got this, Shepard.” Kaidan spoke and started to move with his omni-tool without giving Shepard a chance to respond. He didn’t know whether it was opening the crate that did it (what was that lining made of that they could read the tubes of not-eezo but not the explosive?) or whether the thing had been ticking away already (had the batarians known?), but there was only a couple of minutes left on the timer. Shepard and Garrus behind him were working, he knew, on opening other cases and checking for explosives. That was good, but there was, honestly, only so much time before bombs went off, and there were enough cases that if they all had explosives- No. Kaidan had to focus on disarming this bomb. It didn’t matter how many others there were if he didn’t disarm this one.

“Other crates are clear.” Kaidan heard Shepard’s voice distantly as he attempted to drown it all out. Focus, he told himself.

The timer stopped. One of the tubes cracked, the powder spilling down its side and onto Kaidan’s armored hand. Kaidan could have sworn it smelled- almost- like red sand. He held his breath, pressing his lips together tightly as he shook the powder off of him. He could hear Shepard exhaling behind him.

“Well, this just got interesting,” Garrus said.

Kaidan, still holding his breath, closed the crate.

Mordin turned the scanner on his omnitool off. “Fascinating.”

Only age and experience kept Kaidan from squirming on the examination bench. He had no problem with the salarian, but Mordin was no Doctor Chakwas. Mordin had a tendency to forget that Kaidan could hear him during the examination, to swing between rambling about his observations and humming to himself, all of which would have been amusing if Kaidan wasn’t the one under examination.

It was just to be safe, they assured him, and Kaidan knew that, technically. He’d come into contact with the element zero compound in a way that the others hadn’t. Since the compound was unknown, the task of examination fell to Mordin instead of Chakwas. The past half hour had been spent in the lab making sure that Kaidan felt as fine as he insisted that he did- that he wasn’t understating or unaware of symptoms.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers and sighed. He wasn’t sure what Mordin was saying fascinating to, and he was hesitant to ask. He assumed it was the usual- the fact that he suffered so little physical damage from his L2 implant, the fact that he hadn’t managed to collapse under the stress of what the implant did do to him. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d had to deal with an oncoming headache while a doctor marveled at the fact that the migraines were the worst of it, after all.

Shepard and Garrus were both there for the examination. Kaidan was rattling off his observations about the substance to Mordin whenever Mordin allowed him to get a word in edgewise, but there was one statement in particular that caught Shepard’s attention.

“Are you sure it smelled like Red Sand?” Shepard moved in closer, eyes narrowed in thought.

Kaidan nodded. “Positive.” Shepard wasn’t offended; he knew that Shepard only asked the question because he wanted confirmation of what he’d heard, not because he’d doubted that it was true.

“I didn’t smell anything,” Garrus commented. He’d taken up residence in the chair at Chakwas’ desk. Leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, he managed to look like he was waiting to be passed a beer rather than discussing a recent assault. Kaidan couldn’t place how much of that was intentionally, natural, or Shepard’s influence sometimes, and he’d always been curious. But there was no good way to ask that kind of question, and _now_ certainly wasn’t the proper time.

Kaidan shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. There are some things that you don’t get confused about.” Garrus tilted his head curiously. Kaidan and Garrus were close- every one of the survivors who’d gone after Saren were- but Kaidan hadn’t ever felt comfortable talking in too much detail about his past with the turian. It wasn’t Garrus’ fault; Shepard was the only one who’d ever gotten much out of Kaidan beyond the occasionally beer stool tale. Kaidan wasn’t ashamed of his childhood. That wasn’t the right word for it- he’d change his mistakes if he could, would take back so many things, but he’d lived long enough to own his history. He’d tell Garrus if Garrus actually asked, but especially with Mordin taking careful observation, he wasn’t interested in sharing tales right now. The necessary information was obvious.

Shepard, on the other hand, already knew about Kaidan’s past. Shepard was well aware that Kaidan had been a mess after BaAt, before he’d cleaned up and enlisted. Talking to Shepard about all of those dirty bits of his past had been one of the final steps in moving past them. Shepard was the one who’d told Kaidan that it was okay to still _feel_ things when he thought about the past. There were very few secrets left between them, and at least from Kaidan’s end, no important ones.

“So you’re saying these bombs were stuffed with Red Sand?”

Kaidan shook his head. “You saw the tubes- it definitely _wasn_ _’t_ red sand, but it did smell like it. And it read like eezo, so I don’t know what we’re dealing with. A new street drug? A lab experiment?”

“Numerous experimental alterations of element zero,” Mordin broke in. “Most destroyed in labs, made element zero inert. Red Sand only known recreational form, but doesn’t mean there aren’t others…” He input something into his omnitool quickly. He glanced at Shepard. “Will check with contacts from task force. Maybe also Ilium- less oversight there, new experiments likely.”

“This isn’t just an experiment,” Shepard said, and his tone was dark. Shepard’s shoulders were tense, and Kaidan could see the telltale signs of Shepard resisting the urge to pace while he thought. “Someone got the element zero to behave in a way that they like, and they rigged it to explosives.”

“It’s too much to hope that it’s some poorly designed party gag, isn’t it?” Garrus drawled.

“Have you ever seen a party gag that needed to be hooked up to an explosive?”

Kaidan raised his hand, slightly more abashed than he was a moment again. “I actually have.” Shepard and Garrus both looked at him. “Hazing, during my first year in the Alliance. Everyone in my unit went through it.” At least, they’d gone through it until one of the pranks triggered an evacuation of the barracks- one of the more embarrassing moments in his military career, honestly.

Shepard threw him a long look, before continuing. “This definitely isn’t hazing. Whatever it is, it got Alliance attention and batarian attention, and I don’t like when things get the attention of the batarians.” They were all in agreement about that point, at the very least. “I sent Hackett a breakdown of what we found, and as soon as Mordin knows more, we’ll take the next step. Until then, I have EDI keeping a look out for signals on the same frequency, as well as any new information about the terrorists.”

“And what do we do until then?” Garrus queried, although by the impatience in his tone, Kaidan was certain that Garrus already knew the answer. “Wait?”

“My ship, Garrus,” Shepard commented, “Have you ever known me to just sit and wait? Stay ready- the second there’s something to shoot, I’ll throw it your way.”

“That still sounds like waiting,” Garrus countered, standing up and shrugging.

“Your concern is noted.” Shepard turned to Mordin. “Are you done with your patient, Mordin?”

“What? Oh, yes. Kaidan’s fine. Will run additional tests later.” Mordin waved them off. At least, Kaidan thought that Mordin was waving them off. The action might have simply been Mordin already moving on to another task and forgetting about them. He was still muttering to himself as he made his way out of the medical bay, presumably to his lab. “If substance is similar to red sand, must discover reason for lack of euphoria. Also for zero spike in biotics…”

Kaidan jumped off the examination table, rolling his shoulders. “I, for one, am not going to start complaining about the lack of effects.”

“Neither am I,” Shepard said. “Since Mordin’s done, you’ve got some time on your hands, right soldier?”

“I always have time for you, Shepard.”

He didn’t intend to sound quite so…honest when he spoke, to give such a genuine answer to a casual turn of phrase. It was too late to take it back- Garrus already looked like he was losing a battle with a resigned eye roll, and Shepard was already throwing Kaidan a smirk- so all Kaidan could do was own the statement. It wasn’t difficult; he’d come so close to running out of time with Shepard, he wasn’t so sure he could risk not making time ever again.

As Garrus nodded at the two of them and made his way out the medbay, Shepard crossed his arms, shifting his weight from one hip to the other. The unintentional pose made Kaidan smile back, remembering how many times he’d made Shepard give him that exact same look, hold himself in that exact same posture. Nostalgia was getting to be a pain in his ass. “Meet me in my cabin once you’ve cleaned up.”

Kaidan didn’t ask if cleaning up before going to the commander’s cabin was an order, even though he was sorely tempted to. He just nodded, swallowed a lump in his throat, and decided on taking a nice shower before going to see Shepard. Maybe _that_ would keep him focused- because nothing else was.


	4. Chapter 4

The captain’s cabin was so much smaller than the one on the SR1. Technically it was larger, about twice the size okayed on an Alliance ship. The bed, for example, was far larger than the one that Shepard had back on the SR1. Kaidan knew that just looking at it from the doorway, knew exactly how big the old one had felt, and he could imagine the difference easily. Memories like that were precisely why, for Kaidan, the cabin seemed so very small, despite its size.

Kaidan hadn’t noticed it so much when they were first talking about Kaidan’s assignment to the SR2. There were too many awkward emotions and unsaid, unfinished thoughts that needed to be put out into the open. With that conversation at least started, though, Kaidan now had to deal with the most simple and basic part of his relationship with Shepard: the fact that he was very, very much still attracted to Shepard physically, and, after battle, they’d once had a very specific routine, one which they didn’t have anymore. Because of that routine, all Kaidan could do was look at the cabin space- at the bed and the desk, and the walls- and transpose the SR1 cabin on top of it. He stretched it out in his mind across the space, swallowing the lump in his throat and trying not to think about the first few memories of Shepard’s cabin that came to mind.

Dozens of missions ended in Shepard’s cabin. Dozens of gunfights and throw downs across the galaxy. There was always the rush of adrenaline, just like on that freighter. There was always that cockiness that came from winning alongside Shepard, or that desperate need to feel and touch him. It was always a balancing act after a mission, getting himself under control- but knowing that Shepard was going to be waiting for him, here, always added to the anticipation.

At the end of a firefight, under the armor, Kaidan’s skin buzzed with biotic energy still flowing over his skin, and it was breathing exercises learned as a teenager that kept him cool.

In the SR1 cabin, though, Kaidan had never had to keep his cool. With armor and helmets off and guns put in their lockers, Kaidan and Shepard were pressed against the nearest surface. If they were close enough, if they pressed against each other roughly enough, Kaidan wouldn’t even need to push to for Shepard to feel the biotic buzz along his skin too.

Lips against lips in a much smaller room than this, but in the SR2 Kaidan couldn’t help but feel…choked. He was too close to Shepard without touching him, without the release his body was still, after two years, primed and waiting for. The medical exam, he’d thought, had killed the thrill entirely, and he’d be okay for this little conversation. Being in Shepard’s cabin, however, made it all come back, and it was all he could do to distract himself.

He was very bad at distracting himself from Shepard. He couldn’t think of anyone who was good at it.

“Are you _nervous_ , Kaidan?” Sitting on the couch, Shepard couldn’t help but mock, the smirk on his face little more than a twisted quirk of his lip.

Kaidan shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.” He ran a hand along the desk. On the SR1, he and Shepard had sex twice on the desk- he’d knew the number exactly, because every moment with Shepard was the kind of moment worth recalling with the clarity of a new vid, _especially_ moments  with and behind Shepard, their hands up against the wall in front of them for support. He pulled his hand from the desk quickly, as if he could disconnect from the memory as easily as all that.

“Well, I promise I won’t bite.”

Kaidan couldn’t help himself. “So you want me disappointed as well as nervous?”

Shepard laughed, and his laugh is that same damned laugh that had escaped him between moans on that desk. “Ah, I get it now.”

“You didn’t before?” Kaidan raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s say I had an inkling when you walked in…but I wasn’t sure.” Shepard’s admission accompanied his own nonchalant shrug, before he gestured for Kaidan to move in closer. “We sat down in here a few hours ago, Kaidan. Are you saying those batarians hit you hard enough that you don’t know how to do that anymore?”

Kaidan wasn’t sure whether to smile or retort back, and so his lips screwed up in amusement. “Maybe it wasn’t the batarians. We rammed into each other pretty hard back in that freighter.”

“Are you blaming me?”

Between the teasing, Kaidan was able to move himself further into the room. With every step he remember how the cabin in the SR1 felt against his body, how Shepard felt against the walls of the old cabin- but that was unavoidable, Kaidan told himself. It was going to be _that_ easy to think about Shepard, and sex, and their relationship. It wasn’t easy avoid thinking about back when they were on a more even keel- why should it be easy to forget now? “Yeah, I think I am, commander.”

Shepard bit his lip for a moment, and Kaidan wondered what the flash of thought was behind his eyes. Shepard moved over a little more on the couch. “Sit down, Major.” Shepard managed to turn the rank into a purr, into something indecent. It was one of Shepard’s greatest skills. Kaidan finally sat, and Shepard extended an arm over the back of the couch. “This doesn’t need to be difficult, Kaidan.”

“It doesn’t?” Somehow, Kaidan doubted that. Shouldn’t it be difficult? There was nothing that Kaidan wanted more than to just be able to stop over thinking this, but what else could he do? He would die to just forget about the guilt, the mistakes, the panic of Shepard’s death and rebirth. If he could do that, then they’d be doing what they’d done so many times before, hands quickly removing their uniforms, Shepard pushing Kaidan back against the couch while the two of them did everything they could to not stop touching each other, to keep their lips pressed against the other for as long as they could…It would make coming back to the ship after a mission so much easier, so much less frustrating, both emotionally and physically.

But Kaidan sometimes over thought things. Worried that he wasn’t thinking enough about things.

Sometimes, Shepard made it look easy. Kaidan knew that it wasn’t, that nothing was remotely _simple_ and _straight-forward_ in Shepard’s life, but once Shepard started down a path he stuck to it. In spite of a lot of Kaidan’s best efforts, even before Cerberus Shepard kept a lot of his doubts and concerns to himself. If he wanted it done, wanted to do it, then Shepard did it.

Right now, looking at Shepard’s lips, Kaidan envied that about Shepard more than anything else in the world.

“Not right now it doesn’t,” Shepard said. “Look, if you don’t want to have this conversation right now-”

“-it’s not conversation I’m concerned about,” Kaidan reminded him.

“-then we don’t have to,” Shepard finished. “But having you out in the field with me felt good. Great. And having you here after a fight is better.” Kaidan laughed. “What?”

“We sound like teenagers, you realize that, right?”

“That’s not so bad,” Shepard shrugged. “But I like to think I’m a little less awkward than a teenager.” He lifted the hand that was stretched out behind Kaidan and began to play with Kaidan’s hair. The slight contact was near unbearable. They sat for a brief moment before Shepard leaned in, kissing Kaidan.

It had been so long since he’d felt Shepard’s lips, and he was shocked by how much of the feeling wasn’t exactly sexual. There was a relief there that he hadn’t been expecting: those lips were still Shepard’s, were still so very recognizable, even with Kaidan’s eyes closed. Every time they’d been in contact with each other so far, Kaidan half-expected to discover that Shepard was a hologram, that his hands would melt through Shepard and all of this would fall apart. Shepard would still be dead, Kaidan would still be alone, and none of it was real.

But the pressure of Shepard against him was so real it shocked it, made his heart jump just as much- more than- his dick did. He wasn’t even surprised when he felt wet warmth on his cheeks. When they parted, Kaidan started to apologize for being overly emotional, but the apology fell short.

When he looked Shepard in the eyes, he realized the tears were from Shepard’s eyes, not his own.

 

“Bull _shit_ Vega, you couldn’t fight your way out of a nursery if any of the ten month olds had biotics, don’t give me that!”

Jack, and Vega were already in the middle of an amazingly energetic discussion by the time that Shepard and Kaidan made it to the mess hall. Back in the cabin, Shepard considered the idea of him and Kaidan eating alone upstairs, but he decided against asking. If they stayed in the cabin, Shepard knew, there was a good chance they wouldn’t leave until EDI sent a message up about the substance they’d encountered. Tempting, but ridiculous. Anything else they wanted to do or say to each other could wait until they were done eating.

Besides, eating with Vega and Jack was an experience that Kaidan should have as soon as possible, Shepard assured him.

During his run with Cerberus, Shepard had successfully buried- but never forgotten- the feelings he had about and for Kaidan. The mission was in an almost standstill now, with these runaround missions for Hackett. The batarians and the bomb would likely be handled within a few days, like every other mission Hackett had sent Shepard out on recently, and that meant there was a lot of time for Shepard to think about things that weren’t The Mission. The space between his frustration at being an errand boy and his frustrations that no one was taking the reaper threat seriously enough was filled with thinking about Kaidan. About him and Kaidan, to be more specific, and there wasn’t much relief in knowing that Kaidan was in the same awkward place as he was.

“I get that you’re a big and mean biotic, Jack, but let’s be real- I think I know a little bit more about fighting soldiers than you do, biotic or not. That’s not a bad thing, though, I’ve seen you tear up guards, you’re good at what you do, but-” Vega had forgotten the last third of his meal, abandoning it in favor of sharing war stories. That was almost always what conversations with Vega boiled down to- Shepard wasn’t sure he’d ever met a soldier more competitive than Vega, except maybe Garrus-, and with Jack, it was even worse.

She rolled her eyes, putting a leg up on the table lazily. It was a clear and easy sign that she wasn’t interested in being sat next to, that she wanted her section of the mess hall table to herself. Shepard was fine with it; after all, getting her to eat with the crew, instead of the in the belly of the ship, had been a struggle. “Don’t butt me, Vega, or I’ll shove all that muscle of yours up your ass.”

“Slow down you two,” Shepard interjected. “I’d like to get through a meal without having to step in between you two.” Shepard and Kaidan sat down on his left, Vega moving to give them a little more room.

The conversation seemed to be Jack’s equivalent to friendly ribbing- a little rougher around the edges than maybe someone else would have come at the conversation, but she wasn’t leaping across the table to punch Vega in the face, so Shepard wasn’t worried. She seemed to get along with Vega, in spite of the fact that everyone knew that he was there as the equivalent to an Alliance prisoner guard. They both liked to rough house, they were both loud and brooding in cycles…they had a lot in common, personality wise.

Not that Shepard would point it out to either of them, in case they took offense to the idea.

“What’s the scenario?” Kaidan queried around a bite of his dinner, his tone curious and conversational.

“She’s saying you fight ex-Alliance Cerberus guys same way you’d come up against mercs on Omega,” Vega explained. “I’m saying you can’t do that, because they don’t come at you like military men.” Jack laughed, a hooting, mocking laugh that made Vega clench his jaw and gesture at her. “Come _on_ , Commander, explain it to her.”

Shepard started to respond, but Kaidan spoke up. “Actually, you can assume at least half of the mercs you’d find on Omega are ex-military.” Still, his tone wasn’t confrontational. “Those that aren’t don’t last very long, or are trained by other mercs who were ex-military to stay alive. Assume everyone on Omega has training until proven otherwise.”

“ _See_?” Jack slammed her hand against the table triumphantly. “Even Shepard’s good ol’ little teacher over here knows about Omega.”

“Teacher?” Kaidan echoed. “I mean, I train students, so I am, but-”

Shepard leaned over slightly. “You’ve got a tone.”

“I’ve got a tone?”

“A very teacherly tone,” Shepard replied fondly. Kaidan shook his head.

Vega nodded in Kaidan’s direction. “Were you station on Omega or something?” He sounded like he was ready to jump on any tidbit worthy of continuing the debate. Shepard understood Vega’s occasional defensiveness, though; whatever he was trying to prove wasn’t to the group. It was to himself- and occasionally to Shepard. Trying to explain that Shepard didn’t need any kind of proof of anything besides his ability to work and function in the field was difficult.

Kaidan played with his food for a moment. It was an awkward pause, one that Shepard caught pretty easily. Still looking down at his meal, he answered, after a few beats. “No, I, uh, wasn’t stationed there.”

Jack raised her eyebrow challengingly. “What the fuck were you doing on Omega then? Grocery run?”

“No, I, uh,” Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck. He was a little embarrassed by the attention, that much was obvious, but he continued on. “I spent some time there before I enlisted.” Another pause. “Went back for a minute when I left the Normandy. Not much has changed in the past decade, from what I could tell.”

The first part of that wasn’t a surprise to Shepard. Kaidan had hinted at a lot of stories in the time that they’d spent together, only elaborating if Shepard pressed the point- and sometimes not even then. The second part, however, was news to him. Shepard knew what ‘leaving the Normandy’ was code for; he’d have to be an idiot not to understand. Kaidan hadn’t said anything about going to Omega after his death. It wasn’t farfetched to imagine that Kaidan might have been put on leave to cope with the attack- Shepard probably would have needed the same thing. To even consider Kaidan ending up on Omega’s docks worried Shepard.

How bad had it been for Kaidan? Shepard knew from his letter about how hard it had been to adjust to life without Shepard- or he’d thought he had. How wrong was he?

Shepard and Kaidan didn’t even have a chance to trip over changing the topic. Jack moved her leg off the table in one wide sweeping motion, leaning forward with her forearms resting on the table. “That how you find out how Red Sand smelled?” Shepard felt as if he should have seen that question coming a mile away. Although she hadn’t been in the med bay when Kaidan reported to Mordin and Shepard, the squad knew that everything Kaidan had said. Everyone heard that briefing. No one else had brought it up- not that they’d had any time to, Shepard mused.

“It’s one of the ways,” Kaidan answered honestly.

“You weren’t a cop; not on Omega,” Jack stated. “So what was your deal?” Shepard wasn’t sure if she was seriously curious, or asking to get under Kaidan’s skin. If that was her goal, Shepard wasn’t sure if it was working, either. Kaidan let out the heavy sigh of someone who knew that a conversation had to come around eventually. “Thought you were a military brat like Shepard, born and raised for your little uniforms.”

Picking at his food again for a few beats, Kaidan chose his words carefully. “That’s not wrong either. I spent a lot of time floating between brain camp and enlisting.”

“BAaT?”

All three men looked surprised. It was Vega, though, who said anything. “You know what that is?”

“Do _you_?” She snapped back. “It was the Alliance’s ‘Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training’.” She made quotation marks around the name. “What kind of idiot do you guys think I am?”

“I just thought you were a little young to know it,” Kaidan offered.

Jack snorted, her lips curling up in a defensive sneer. “Are you screwing with me? If it’s about biotics, I’ve read about it. I have it committed to memory. You think I don’t know every back alley dirty piece of crap experiment and training humans have done with biotics? You don’t even have to snoop around that much to find out about it. I know it _all-_ all the nasty little mistakes. I know about Conatix, I know about the ex-turian military fuck that died in there-” Kaidan flinched at that, but Jack kept going, oblivious to the reaction. “-and I know about when the place got shut down. BAaT bred the sort of researchers that Cerberus ended up funding down the line, so stop looking at me like you think I don’t know how to read a file.” She settled back into her chair with an irritated _thump_.

“Well, I don’t know that much about it,” Vega responded lamely.

“You don’t know shit about biotics, so no one’s surprised, muscle bags,” Jack snapped back. She waved a hand with frustrated dismissal. “So brain camp. Yeah, I heard about the place. They pulled a lot of fucked up shit on kids.” As she said that, though, she looked away, her voice trailing off. Shepard had seen that look before, when they’d explored Pragia and discovered all the things about the facility that Jack _hadn_ _’t_ been able to glean from information picked up after she’d escaped. Maybe a year ago, she would have been able to dismiss BAaT like she’d dismissed what the other children on Pragia, but things had changed- were still changing, by the frustrated, almost petulant look on her face.

Kaidan cleared his throat. “Before I decided where I wanted to be, I made alot of mistakes, and, uh, Red Sand was probably one of the biggest.”

“You don’t seem like a duster to me,” Vega said.

“I haven’t been in a while,” Kaidan said. “Managing sobriety for this long is one of the things I’m really proud of. It wasn’t easy.”

Jack was eying him a little differently now, and Shepard wasn’t one hundred percent sure what to pull from it. She was more receptive, that much was clear, but Shepard wasn’t clear if that was because of Kaidan’s frank honesty, or because they shared a common past- experimentation and trauma was always a hell of a thing to understand. “Red Sand’s a real trip when you’ve already got biotics.” It was a statement, not a question.

Kaidan nodded; unlike when she’d known about BAaT, Kaidan managed to keep any real reaction off his face. “It is. Running high on that and alcohol, it was easy to forget what I was running from for awhile.” Another deep breath, this one just as tired as the last. “But luckily, it didn’t keep working. When I got myself cleaned up, I enlisted.” He smiled, but it was strained. “And that’s when my life stops being interesting until Shepard shows up.”

“The commander does know how to make things interesting, doesn’t he?” Vega said knowingly. The maudlin tone of the rest of the conversation was still hanging, but Kaidan had given them a way out of it. Vega seemed more than happy to bite.

Jack, less so. She pushed her chair away from the table and grabbed her tray. “I’m heading down,” she said abruptly. “You know where to find me if you need.” Kaidan looked as if he wanted to say something; Shepard put a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, shaking his head no. Jack would probably respond badly if Kaidan said anything when she was ready to bolt. It was better to let her think; whatever she was thinking about, it was likely just as heavy as whatever Kaidan had in his head right now.

It was a couple of seconds before Kaidan spoke again. “Speaking of Shepard making things interesting…does he still get stopped by people asking to take his picture with their omnitool?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen her warm to someone that fast before,” Shepard said.

After sharing stories for awhile, Vega called it quits, and Shepard and Kaidan moved to the starboard observatory. Settling down in a couple of chairs- and remembering to grab a few beers from Shepard’s stash-, the two of them watching the galaxy in silence for a little while before Shepard spoke. Almost as soon as Shepard spoke, Kaidan couldn’t help but think about how ungodly old they must sound in that moment, talking about Jack. How ungodly older he _felt_.

Part of it was that his body ached from the freighter fight. He must have gotten knocked around more than he thought, because even though he usually felt the bruising and aches from combat, he was definitely worse off than he typically was. He didn’t want to go to the bunk just yet- or would he end up with Shepard? He wasn’t really sure, and maybe that was why he didn’t want to move just yet.

His head hurt just trying to think about moving, to be honest.

“That’s her warming to me?” Kaidan chuckled. “I’d hate to see what she’s like if she wasn’t.”

“You have no idea,” Shepard smirked. The look on his face said precisely how fond Shepard was of Jack. Kaidan wasn’t surprised. It was never just business with Shepard and his crew. Shepard felt strongly about all of them, one way or another- Kaidan had heard a little bit from Garrus about Shepard’s particular feelings about Zaeed Massani, and Kaidan had seen how Shepard would take some of his squad members under his wing. Jack was one of those, like Garrus had been once, that Tali had been.

Even though Shepard had never precisely been Kaidan’s mentor, it didn’t take much imagination to see how easily Shepard fit into the role. “I think it’s just because she trusts you, Shepard,” Kaidan countered. Then he reconsidered. “Actually, that’s probably why she didn’t like me to start.”

“How do you figure that?” Shepard brought his beer up to his lips while he cocked an eyebrow.

“She was with you on Horizon,” Kaidan said simply. “I remember seeing her there. All she knew about me, she probably knew from there.” Kaidan paused as he watched Shepard drink for a moment, watching his throat as he swallowed. “I was angry, and I turned down your offer. Can’t have been a great first impression.”

Shepard considered Kaidan’s explanation as he put his beer down on the floor. He tilted his head, a small smile dancing on his lips. “Damn shame- you usually make a hell of a first impression. You did on me.”

“Did I?” Kaidan questioned.

“Well, you were definitely one of the hottest soldiers I’ve ever served with,” Shepard said. Kaidan laughed. “This is the point where you flirt back at me, Alenko.”

“I think you know perfectly well how attracted I am to you,” Kaidan countered. He moved his beer bottle back and forth between his hands, glancing out at the black expanse of space in front of them. He narrowed his eyes looking at it, trying very hard to get lost in that view, instead of giving into Shepard’s teasing. He rolled his shoulders. “From what you’ve said- and what she said tonight-, she’s been through a lot. I’m not sure she’s going to warm up much more to me. I don’t blame her.” Kaidan wondered what he would have been like in her situation. He’d felt what being cared for was like before BAaT, even at the brain camp. His parents, the other students, he’d had a support system once- one that he’d thrown away a few times, but that had been just as much him as circumstance. He imagined having fallen into Red Sand, and not having his folks to call up when he desperately wanted to pull himself out of it. He couldn’t, not really. He understood Jack’s issue, as far as anyone could.

Shepard leaned foward enough to hold the neck of his beer loosely between two fingers, but he didn’t lift it. “Well, if we’re going to keep being serious…you didn’t tell me you went back to Omega.”

When Shepard stared like that, with the kind of intensity that he was looking back at Kaidan with, Kaidan couldn’t look away. Kaidan wasn’t sure there was a person that had ever met Shepard that could just turn away. Kaidan held his gaze somberly because he couldn’t not, and lifted the beer to tip it back. He changed his mind, and simply held on to it. “I’d gone through a lot, Shepard. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to come back from that- if you’ll pardon the pun.”

“But you did.”

“With the help of the Alliance, of my friends. And hey- I’m not going to say I didn’t drink, because I did, but I didn’t take a single drug while I was on Omega. I was miserable, but that was one thing I couldn’t do to your memory. I wasn’t going to make you responsible for that in my mind. You deserve better.”

“I’m sorry,” Shepard said, and the apology was so sincere that Kaidan’s heart hurt along with the rest of his body. “If I-”

“Don’t. If you could have lived then, you would have. I don’t think that takes any explanation or genius to figure that one out. I know. And if I could change rejecting your offer on Horizon-”

“Don’t _you_ do that,” Shepard interjected. “You made the right choice with the information you had. Working with Cerberus wasn’t one of the prouder moments of my career, but I did what I had to. And you did what you had to. That’s done.” Just thinking in what ifs did more than make Kaidan’s head- which was threatening him with a migraine- pound; it turned his stomach something awful. He was surprisingly nauseous, and after swallowing a lump in his throat, he put his beer down on the floor, frowning. “Kaidan, are you okay? You look sick, and you barely drank half that beer. You’re not turning into a light weight on me, are you?”

It was said jokingly, but Shepard was tilting his head, his eyes narrowed in concern. Kaidan brought two fingers up to rub his temple. “Mordin didn’t find anything, so it’s probably just a bad migraine, Shepard. Nothing for you to worry about.” As if to mock his assurance, the migraine pulsed. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, but it did nothing to ease the pressure. If anything, the pressure in his head- and in his gut, now that he was aware of it- was increased by the motion, and he opened his eyes. The pressure didn’t alleviate.

And there was another feeling too. A buzzing that was very familiar. “Kaidan.” The humor was out of Shepard’s voice completely.

Kaidan didn’t respond, because he was too busy looking down at his hands. His arms. His legs. He didn’t need to look; he knew what this was, even if _this_ shouldn’t be happening. He had literally decades worth of self-control when it came to his biotics, after all.

So why was he suddenly producing visible biotic shield down the length of his body?


	5. Chapter 5

Twenty-four hours later, Kaidan had been back under observation for nearly half a day.

“Didn’t catch it because it’s not an illness.”

Shepard had a hard time believing that, even if Mordin seemed convinced. “He can’t control his biotics, doc, after coming into contact with that bomb. How is that not him getting sick?”

“But he _can_ control it,” Mordin countered. This time, he was looking at a blood sample in under a microscope, but now he lifted his head to look at Shepard. “Takes more effort, but it’s possible.” Shepard had firmly situated himself in one of the chairs, and hadn’t moved since he’d gone to get the last update from EDI and Garrus on the investigation into tracing the bomb. There hadn’t been much progress made outside the lab, even though EDI was still scanning for any signals or encrypted messages that seemed suspicious.

Normally, Shepard could use his worry and concern to drive him, but because there wasn’t anything for him to fight, he was sitting frustrated. Without knowing what the cause was, at first, it was only in the past two hours that Mordin had allowed Kaidan to take any sort of pain suppressant. Standard procedure, since Mordin didn’t know what would interact badly with the eezo substance, but still, Kaidan was clearly suffering through more than the usual migraine.

“Issue isn’t lack of control, it’s increase in power,” Mordin explained. He gestured towards one of the monitors across the room. “Spikes in brain activity, in biotic ability. Apparent cause: contact with tainted element zero. Intentionally altered, but done sloppily. Amateurs, embarrassing.”

“What do you mean ‘increase in power’?” Kaidan asked. He was standing, now, arms crossed as he watched Mordin move back and forth. He’d spent the first few hours in the medical bay, being physically re-examined. After that, Mordin had taken Kaidan back into his lab, running both blood work and making Kaidan participate in some basic biotic testing. To say that Kaidan was tense was an understatement; the feeling, he’d said, of being in the position of lab rat had driven him to pace for a while until he realized he was doing it.

“Element zero exposure causes biotic ability,” Mordin began. Shepard glanced over at Kaidan while they waited for the explanation to get to a part that they both didn’t already know. “Red Sand, variation on element zero, causes temporary biotic ability, or temporary increase in biotics. This alteration much like Red Sand- except no effect on non-biotics. Creates no new element zero nodules in body tissue” Mordin gestured towards his blood samples. “Reacts to previously existing nodules, increases the mass effect field generated by tissue.” Mordin walked away from his microscope, across the room to a terminal beside Kaidan. He gestured for Kaidan to move to the side.

Mordin made the image from the microscope appear on the terminal. It was similar to the vids that Shepard had been shown during military training, the examples of element zero’s effect on the human body. The blue from the fields, however, was brighter, sharper, but to Shepard’s untrained eye, it might as well have been a color-adjusted image. He waited for Mordin to continue, watching Kaidan chew his lip thoughtfully on the side.

“So you’re saying that I _can_ stop doing this?” Kaidan lifted his hands. His whole body still glowed blue, something that Shepard was used to seeing only in combat situations. It was unsettling; an almost pavlovian reaction of combat-readiness hit Shepard every time he looked at Kaidan. Aside from the migraine- which was now medicated-, Kaidan seemed to be handling the situation as well as anyone could be. Any thoughts besides ‘what’s going on’ were neatly tucked away for the moment.

Mordin nodded. “Retraining. Focus.” Kaidan’s jaw clenched, and only a second or two later the blue dimmed- it didn’t stop, but it dimmed. Kaidan was grimacing. Mordin shrugged. “Turning off the field is likely more difficult than letting it go. Best course of action will be to let it be.”

Kaidan opened his mouth as if to argue, but then shut it again. Shepard frowned at him, and Kaidan shook his head; whatever he wanted to say he thought could wait until later. Which, considering the circumstances, made Shepard even more curious than before. Shepard’s expression must have made that clear, because Kaidan gestured with his head at Mordin, who was so immersed in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice.

“Motivation behind alteration unclear- possibly experiment in biotic enhancement.” Mordin scratched his chin as he considered the option. “Amateur work, though, no decent lab would make so much of a failed product. Maybe new drug? No, no, makes no sense- why store in bombs instead of selling? Perhaps plan to hit area with high concentration of biotics, but again, why? Increase in ability makes biotics more dangerous, not less, at least for short period of time-”

“-Maybe that’s the point?” Kaidan suggested. It must have been a private thought that he’d been about to share, Shepard filled in, although he couldn’t imagine _what_ it was. “Admiral Hackett thought this was connected to the L2 terrorists, right? Maybe they’re looking to increase the strength of their biotics to be a bigger threat.”

Shepard nodded. “Makes sense. Makes the Alliance- and the Council- _have_ to listen to them. At least, that would be their angle.”

“And that would explain the sloppiness- whatever lab did this probably isn’t backed by anyone or anything. They’d be working messily.” Kaidan swallowed, and Shepard could see the stress in the movement from where he stood. Whether it was stress from the situation or physical, he couldn’t tell.

Mordin shook his head. “No, no, still wrong. Corruption of element zero successfully increases biotic output, but high physical cost. Too high.” He frowned sharply.

Kaidan raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to ask what you mean by that?” He pulled a chair from against the wall and sat in it, as if bracing himself for the rest of the information. Shepard was doing the same, although trying not to show it. He doubted he was doing the best job, and after only a moment of further consideration, decided that he really didn’t care. There were greater issues at hand then his face remaining stoic, and it didn’t look as if he had to worry about making Kaidan panic, after all.

“Human body has limits. Accommodates certain amounts of element zero exposure, cells adjust. Different amounts of potential for each person.”

“Makes sense,” Shepard said. “It’s why some people develop cancerous cells when exposed, others get biotics.”

“New substance over taxes the body’s ability to compensate,” Mordin elaborated. As he spoke, he gestured energetically, still clearly putting thoughts together as quickly as he spoke them. “Burns out the biotics brain. Normal exposure doesn’t increase ability with prolonged amount of time; this does. Body cannot adapt quickly enough. Power continues to increase-”

“Until my brain can’t handle it,” Kaidan filled in quietly.

Mordin nodded, albeit slightly more somberly than he did before. “Brain tissue cannot handle mass effect fields, eventually.”

Shepard was silent. He’d just gotten Kaidan back, and the anger that flared up at the idea of anything that threatened to take him away was silencing. Kaidan, though, kept talking. “So even if this was what we thought it was, biotic terrorists trying to become more of a threat worth taking seriously- they messed up. They’re going to kill themselves and whoever they hit with these bombs.”

“They hit _you_ ,” Shepard finally said, and his voice was clipped and low because if he didn’t keep it like that, he was pretty sure a stream of curses would be all that he’d manage.

Kaidan glanced back at Shepard, and Shepard could swear the man was actually going to have the gall to _apologize_ for the situation. He didn’t, instead asking the most important of questions. “Can we fix this? Reverse it?”

Mordin considered the question, his chin lifted slightly. “Yes. Takes time, but yes.”

“Do we have time?”

“Enough. Maybe. Will do my best.” Then, after a moment. “Current migraine, physical issues- not symptoms of illness but of stress on body caused by exposure. Can treat some of them, but not source of problem, the biotic power increase.” He tapped his fingers on the side of the counter. “Need to run more tests on blood samples. May need more. For now, will look for biotic suppressant. Should slow substance’s effect on tissue.”

That wasn’t good enough for Shepard. “While you do that, I’m going to make sure EDI finds the bastards responsible for this. I want to know exactly where this bomb was supposed to go off and why.” When he found out the who, where and why, then he was going to put all this frustration to good use.

They’d touched Kaidan. They hadn’t known they would, they probably hadn’t intended to, but they had. Shepard hadn’t fought Saren, hadn’t died, hadn’t gone along with Cerberus, all for some extremist to come in and hurt his people. Especially not Kaidan. Especially not now.

Kaidan took in a shaky breath. It wasn’t the pain that was a problem, unlike what everyone else seemed to assume.

No, the pain was nothing, almost literally. The stress on his body wasn’t so far gone in 48 hours that the medication that Mordin had given him wasn’t working. Kaidan usually bore through his migraines if possible, sans any sort of drugs, so he had very little risk of becoming immune to pain killers. It was no surprise that what Mordin had given him worked as well as it did, reducing the pain in his skull to nothing more than a slight annoyance. With the migraine under control, the nausea and everything else also faded.

The issue was the opposite of pain, actually. Kaidan had explained to Shepard, once or twice, or attempted to explain, how using his biotic abilities felt. He’d even once demonstrated it in bed, playfully tipsy and wanting to share that particular joy with his partner. The rush of the buzzing field of energy around his body, the way that it touched his skin, even the very hairs on his body…

Distraction was putting it mildly. When he was finally alone and thinking about, in the shower off of Shepard’s cabin, he laughed at it, in a very dry way. His whole body might be ticking down to burning out, but it felt a hell of a lot like some of the more interesting highs he’d had in his life.

His sense of humor at the moment, was _incredibly_ morbid.

Once Mordin shooed them out of the lab- No need for Kaidan to be there, the exposure wasn’t something that he could pass on to Jack or any of the others with biotic potential on the ship-, Kaidan hadn’t wanted to go back to the main bunks. He didn’t need to say that, fortunately, because Shepard had offered the use of his shower. Kaidan took advantage of the offer, relieved.

He must have been in shock to be so relieved, he knew, since he’d spent only two days before trying to avoid anything resembling in the realm of ‘being naked within twenty meters of Shepard’. Now, though, he was in the man’s shower, trying to get himself under control with a cold shower, and it wasn’t working.

Shepard knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”

Kaidan had lost track of how long he’d been in there. “You can come in,” he said after a moment, blinking under the jet stream. He ran his hands back through his hair and took a breath as the door to the bathroom slid open. While the private bathroom was a Cerberus touch, the bathroom wasn’t much more than a space for the shower, a sink and the toilet. There wasn’t even a glass separating the shower from the rest of the space, simply a dip in the floor.

Shepard was clearly swallowing thoughts he wanted to share when he saw Kaidan. Maybe in another moment, Shepard would have been smirking, making some flirty comment. Instead, they were both standing there, Kaidan in the shower, Shepard in a pair of drawstring black sweats for bed, trying to decide if the timing made this more or less awkward.

The fact that Kaidan was desperately trying to stamp out his own arousal just made the whole situation even more…interesting. He attempted a joke to break the ice. “I have to focus in order to lower my barrier enough to even let the water touch me.” He snorted. “How crazy is that?” In immediate retrospect, he wasn’t sure if it even qualified as a joke, let alone a funny one.

Shepard bit his lip, as if that could keep him from saying whatever it was he was tempted to say, and turned his head respectfully. “We’ll figure this out, Kaidan. I promise.”

“I know you will.” He knew that Shepard didn’t make promises he wouldn’t tear down civilizations. Not that he would have doubted Shepard’s commitment to reversing the effects in the first place. “Trust me, aside from the head splitting pain, that’s the least of my worries.”

There wasn’t much room in there, not with the two of them in the bathroom. Shepard turned to the side, his hands clenched on the edge of the metal sink. Kaidan’s arousal made it difficult to notice anything besides the way Shepard’s muscles moved in his arms, just like Kaidan was sure that his arousal made it tough for Shepard to think about anything else.

“What’s so funny?” Kaidan hadn’t even realized he’d laughed, but now that Shepard had asked, it was only right to share the joke.

“Remember when I told you some of the side effects of using my biotics?” Shepard nodded, although he still wasn’t looking Kaidan’s way. “Not to make use the most embarrassing pun of my adult life, but I’m experiencing one of the harder side effects right now.” Shepard did turn then. “I’ve been trying since when first saw each other again to…go slow.” Not that he’d been doing a very good job of it, but it was the truth. “But right now all I feel like asking is if I could get a little help over here.”

Shepard turned to face Kaidan completely. “I didn’t think that the first time you actually propositioned me would be caused by a bomb induced hard-on, Kaidan. I’m not sure how to respond.

They got to say some ridiculous things in their line of work, didn’t they? “I know it’s not the most romantic of offers. I’ll make it up to you,” Kaidan replied. “I promise.”

“You don’t have to act like it’s something to apologize for.” Shepard took a step forward, closing all the distance between him and the shower. He put a hand against the wall to support himself, and didn’t seem to care one way or another that the shower was still on, and his pants would get wet too. His next words were almost a purr, and did nothing to ease Kaidan’s situation. “I actually enjoy making you feel better.”

This time it was Kaidan who initiated the kiss, both his hands coming up to pull Shepard in. He could feel the barrier moving against the pressure of their bodies, in between them, and it took thought to lower it, but that effort was more than worth it. It felt like the warmth of Shepard’s skin broke through the barrier, more thoroughly than any gunshot. Kaidan’s reaction to the feel of Shepard’s body was more immediate too- the kiss turned into a moan, as one hand moved down to Shepard’s pants.

It had been so long since they’d done anything sexual- so long since Kaidan had done anything sexual with another person _period-_ and Kaidan was so horny, he couldn’t help but move faster than his brain, before the reasonable part of him reminded him of the small space, of the fact that tugging on the waistline of Shepard’s pants got him nothing if he had no leverage. None of that really matter, either, once Shepard’s hands moved in, his right hand wrapping around Kaidan to find a spot firmly on his ass, while the other was at the back of Kaidan’s neck, pulling Kaidan in like Kaidan was pulling him.

He was in a terrible position- and state- to take Shepard’s pants off. “Need a little more…help here, Shepard,” Kaidan breathed. He didn’t so much break off the kiss as speak around it, and once he started to speak, Shepard moved his lips to the right side of Kaidan’s neck, as if that at all resembled being helpful. “Not there, but…” Shepard responded with a gentle, playful bite and Kaidan hissed in pleasure. “Yeah…”

“Thought I was helping,” Shepard said murmured into the curve of Kaidan’s neck and shoulder. Kaidan dropped his head back in the shower, but he still had a hand on Shepard’s pants. Tried to have a hand on Shepard’s pants anyway, as his fingers uncurled with ever lick and nibble from the man.

“You’re not. Not yet- you’re just….making it worse.” There was a smile in Kaidan’s voice that he didn’t notice until he’d spoken, until he felt Shepard’s own lips curl against his skin. The smile made the next words- a challenge- easier. “So _help_ me.”

Shepard brought his left hand down from Kaidan’s neck to grab the wrist of the hand Kaidan had on his pants. Kaidan didn’t stop him from pulling the hand away- he was too distracted by the way the small, single-handed massage on his neck seemed to hit nerve-endings that he hadn’t been aware he had, how Shepard’s calloused finger tips were each responsible for every little jolt that shot from his neck to the middle of his spine to his dick, which somehow managed to react to every single jolt.

Then Shepard did more than tease. Back to kissing Kaidan’s neck, he gripped Kaidan’s cock. Kaidan nearly jumped out of his skin at the contact, and he could hear Shepard laugh into the curve of his neck because of it. “ _Fuck_ , just…” Kaidan was only a step away from making intelligible noises instead of words. Since he’d stepped foot back on the Normandy he’d wanted to touch Shepard. Wanted to be touched by Shepard. Romantically, tenderly, yes, but there were plenty of fantasies about things like this too- Shepard’s rough hand pumping away at Kaidan’s cock at the perfect speed, perfected from so many, many encounters between the two of them. Kaidan’s head dropped back with his only thoughts- his only words- resembling something like, “I said…help…fuck…that, again, dammit Shepard…” but only barely, and only to Shepard, who had heard similarly aroused ramblings before.

Absurd thoughts were bound to pop up when Kaidan could barely think straight, and the one that came to the surface now, while Shepard pressed in close and stroked Kaidan, nibbled at his shoulder in all the places he remembered drove Kaidan wild, was that Shepard’s hand was familiar on his cock, that Kaidan could summon up memories of Shepard’s thumb being right there, of him moving to tease Kaidan’s balls for a moment _just_ like that. It was like Shepard’s hand _fit_ there, like that was where it belonged, as if this was where he and Kaidan both belonged.

All the familiarity hit Kaidan hard, like a meteor, and he came shuddering, a gasping stream of incoherent curse words falling out of his mouth. He leaned forward into Shepard when he orgasmed, his arms wrapping around the man and pulling him even further into the shower. He could feel Shepard through his sweatpants, still half-hard and rubbing against him.

“Did I help?” Shepard whispered in Kaidan’s ear.

Kaidan laughed, even as he felt the biotic barrier coming back. “Yeah, you did.”


	6. Chapter 6

Five hours later- maybe four of them spent sleeping- Shepard and Kaidan were woken up by the beeping that signaled EDI needed to speak to the Commander. Shepard groaned, rolling his shoulder without sitting up, and glanced over at Kaidan. Instead of the biotic barrier wrapping itself around Kaidan’s body, it was radiating over the whole bed. And, because of that, Shepard too.

Kaidan noticed and looked apologetic, and a clenched jaw later the barrier faded from the bed and surrounded just Kaidan. It was a shame; Shepard was pretty sure that had been the major reason they’d been able to hold each other as they slept. But Shepard had other things to think about.

He stood up from bed and went to a drawer to grab a pair of briefs. “EDI?”

Her voice clicked into existence immediately. “We have made significant headway on locating the terrorists, Shepard, as well as their next possible attack.” Whatever lethargy might have come with waking up was gone immediately; Kaidan and Shepard moved quickly to get dressed. “The others are already in the communications room.”

Shepard frowned. “You got them together before letting us know?”

“You were sleeping, they were not. Mordin suggested that we allow you both to rest. Major Alenko in particular.”

“How long have they been waiting?” Kaidan asked, pulling his shirt over his head. “There’s a lot more important things than me getting an extra hour of sleep.”

EDI answered immediately. “We’ve been ready with the information for an hour and a half. The squad has been waiting in the communications room for twenty minutes.” Shepard didn’t respond, but he couldn’t help but repeat Mordin’s findings over in his head, again and again. If they didn’t deal with this threat, Kaidan would burn out. They needed all the available time, but Shepard didn’t want to risk Kaidan by having him running on little to no sleep, either. Each one was a risk, and each choice could end with a result that Shepard wasn’t willing to see come to fruition.

He decided not to get too into the choice to let them sleep. Limited time meant that he’d react to that later, if he needed to. He better not need to.

“We’ll be there in less than five, EDI.” Shepard told her.

“Yes, Shepard.”

With nothing further from EDI, the two of them finished getting dressed in silence. There were things that Shepard wanted to say- he wanted to check up on Kaidan, he wanted to figure out how much of their sex had been stress management and how much of it, for Kaidan, had just been about the two of them. Things, he imagined, they’d only ever just begin to talk about, before the work of being the Normandy crew would eventually interrupt and pull them away from the conversation. It was for that reason that Shepard didn’t start speaking; the conversation, left unfinished, could end on a hundred different notes, most of them sour.

They got on the elevator in further silence. Getting off at CIC, Kaidan put a hand on Shepard’s forearm. Shepard turned his head to look at him. “That wasn’t-” Kaidan hesitated, and then tried again. And he, Shepard had always thought, was the one who was better with words. “When we fix this, and save whoever needs saving, and we’re back on the ship alone for a while, we’re doing that again. And again. Do you hear me?”

They’d known each other for long enough now, Shepard shouldn’t have been surprised by his words. He tried a Commander Shepard smirk on for size, pushing down the worry and anger at the situation. The feeling of Kaidan’s hand on his arm, even though he could feel the slight buzz of the barrier, made it easier than it would have been otherwise. “Only twice?”

Kaidan let go, smiling back at him. He was doing such a good job of reassuring Shepard that Shepard couldn’t help but want to go out and bunch some really bad men- after all, it was Kaidan who was in danger right now. Shepard had barely cared about the assignment before Kaidan was involved. It had been a ploy by Hackett to keep Shepard out of a prison cell; it had been appreciated, but it was supposed to be work that anyone could deal with.

Now, inevitably, like so much in Shepard’s military career, it had become immensely personal. He strode into the comm room with his jaw set tightly. “What have you all got for me?”

Garrus was directly across from Shepard at the other end of the table. To his left were Tali, Vega and Grunt. To his right, Mordin. Jack hovered behind them, pacing with an indecipherably shadowed look in her eyes. She stopped moving for a moment when

“Good news first, or bad?” Garrus said immediately. EDI already had a holographic map raised in the middle of the conference table, where the image of the ship was usually projected.

“All of it. Fast as possible without leaving anything out.”

Tali cleared her throat. “We found a series of similar signals, being sent back and forth between ships. Never from a station or a planet. Typically small ships- the freighter was the largest of them all. Their decryption was not the best, although it did take us a little while to crack the code contained _within_ the decrypted messages.”

“A combination of two Earth languages with some Asari and Batarian slang,” EDI elaborated.

“With some kinda complication letter switching code on top of that,” Vega interjected.

“Transliteration,” came EDI’s correction. “And that was perhaps the easiest part of the translation.”

Shepard put his palms down on the table, leaning forward. “And what did the messages tell us?”

Tali took lead again. “That they’re making a coordinated attack within the next seventy-two hours, approximately.”

The map changed, bringing up several brightly colored dots- presumably the points at which the Normandy intercepted the messages. It was clear that at least three ships were moving in the same area of space. Shepard narrowed his eyes as he recalled all the maps he’d familiarized himself with over the years. “Their target is in the Petra Nebula?” There was a sick lump in his stomach. He knew what he was about to be told. Beside him, Kaidan thrummed a deeper, brighter blue; he knew where this was heading as well.

“Their target is, more specifically, within the Vetus System,” EDI told him.

Garrus crossed his arms. “Their target is the human colony Elysium.”

Kaidan shook his head. “Not exactly.” Garrus tilted his head. “EDI, the target isn’t on the planet, is it? It’s in the planet’s orbit.”

“Yes. All of our decrypted messages give the coordinates of the Jon Grissom Academy.”

Shepard didn’t realize he’d curled his hand into a fist and hit the table until he felt the vibration and ache of contact. “ _Fuck_.” Of course that was the target. It made perfect sense, all things considered. “The batarians we killed on that ship- are they connected to this at all?” Had he gotten to kill any of the sons of bitches responsible yet, or were all of them still dead men walking?

“Tracing nearby emissions, EDI thinks that the batarians stumbled on the freighter and the bomb cache by chance,” Garrus explained. “Nothing more than pirates looking for a score that got more than they could handle. The distress signal was probably the freighter captain hoping that some of his men were still in the area.”

“They wouldn’t be,” Shepard said, his lips pressed together in a thin line as he watched the map projecting above the table zoom in on Elysium and the orbiting Academy. “This is a terrorist attack, not a squad of brothers. If they’re desperate, they don’t want to risk the rest of their equipment being caught by pirates. Safer to lose a limb than the whole body.” He shook his head.

“If they stayed, they would have either been overwhelmed, or forced into combat,” Garrus guessed. “Probably blowing some of those bombs in the process. Presuming they didn’t have any other weapons on board, of course.”

“Is there any way to guess how many of those ships have bombs on them?” Kaidan asked.

EDI answered. “From exhaust emissions, trajectories, and the specific messages decrypted, we have reason to believe that two ships  could possibly be carrying bombs. Neither of them have reached the Academy yet.”

“Then there’s still time to evacuate the school,” Kaidan said. “Get all the students out before the terrorists even touch down.”

“ _We_ still need to get to the academy ourselves,” Shepard said. He glanced over at Vega. “James, I need you to send a message to Hackett ASAP. Have him start mobilizing the students and the teachers.” There were a lot of noncombatants at the Grissom Academy- in fact, the majority of the biotics program was civilian. At any time, there could be parents and families visiting those kids.

And that was what the academy was. A target comprised of kids, no older than their mid-twenties but most of them closer to fifteen or sixteen. Most of them weren’t even biotics, just gifted students who would likely go into the sciences, or politics or any number of private sector jobs. Within the Academy was a small training facility for biotic students.

Anyone who survived the bomb would have the same reaction that Kaidan did. Maybe even more extreme, more immediate- he’d only had contact with the corrupted element zero for a few seconds. Shepard imagined a young biotic, learning to truly control their powers- he imagined them being doused with the substance.

Shepard’s clenched the side of the table hard as Vega gave a sharp nod and went to contact Hackett. “Mordin, tell me you’ve made progress on a treatment for Kaidan.” He didn’t mean it to come out as harshly as it did, didn’t mean to sound as if he’d react badly to negative news…but he would react very poorly if Mordin didn’t have any progress to report.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to figure out what he’d do. “Almost finished with possible serum to reverse effects. Will take more time, but can effectively manage Kaidan’s current symptoms until then. Still, risks- overtaxing himself, not paying attention to symptoms. Monitoring very important. Also! Have compound that should theoretically neutralize large quantities of substance while at low temperatures.”

“So before the bombs go off, is what you’re saying?” Kaidan filled in.

“Precisely,” Mordin answered. “Tubes of substance must be chilled and then the compound injected into tubing.”

Shepard released the edge of the table, practically pushing himself away from it. He felt Kaidan’s eye on him, but he had to focus. “All right, people, this is what we’re doing: Three teams, two Normandy and ground. Normandy teams will attempt to intercept a ship in the air, before it lands. If possible, I don’t want these ships getting close enough to touch the edge of the station’s gravitational pull, is that clear? The ground team will be with me. I want us at the Academy, doing sweeps. I don’t trust these bastards any more than I trust any other bastards we’ve come across- and we don’t know enough about them. Whether or not those ships land, eyes open. Especially if the evacuation isn’t finished. Garrus, Jack, you’re with me. Tali, I want you, Vega and Mordin on one team in the air, with a pilot on the drop ship. Grunt, keep an eye out with EDI and Joker-”

“Are you benching me, Commander?” Kaidan’s voice was low, but tense.

Shepard blinked at the interruption. It wasn’t that he wasn’t accustomed to his team voicing opinions, but he would have thought it was clear what was happening here. “There’s too much that could go wrong, it’s not safe.” It wasn’t that he thought Kaidan couldn’t handle it. It was that he thought of all the ways that Kaidan could overdo it, could push himself too hard.

“I can do the job,” Kaidan said. “And besides- I can’t sit on the sidelines.”

“Then you and EDI can-”

“The one thing this bomb did was amplify my biotics, Shepard. The one thing I’m good for right now, until Mordin finishes what he’s doing, is fighting. Ground fighting. Let me on the ground team, let me watch your back.” Then he turned slightly to the side, his back to the others, and whispered, “I’m not leaving your side to sit on the ship, Shepard. Don’t make me.”

They stared at each other silent for a moment, Shepard struggling. “And if it burns you out?”

“I doubt one fight would be enough to push me over- if it was, Mordin would have me in the medical bay, not in bed with you. Commander.” Low blow, but he had a point. Shepard thought about how he, Kaidan, and Garrus had fought on that freighter. He thought about maybe telling Kaidan no, still. “But if I do, I’d rather it be actually fighting next to you instead of stressing myself out wondering. That’s why I’m on the Normandy in the first place, right?”

Shepard took a deep breath. He turned back to the crew. “All right. Kaidan’s with the ground team.”

“I’m out,” Jack spoke up. “If you’ve got golden boy, you don’t need me.”

Shepard narrowed his eyes at her; what was she playing at? “Yes, I do, Jack. I need every hand on deck. Your position on the ground team isn’t negotiable.” She opened her mouth to argue. “That’s final. You wanted in before, now you’ve got it.” He glanced at everyone around the room. “I want us ready for the jump into the system ASAP. _Dismissed_.”

The crew, who might have still had questions, all threw Shepard their individually quizzical looks on the way out. For once, though, they gave him his space. Except for Kaidan, who didn’t move. Shepard shook his head. “I don’t want you to do this, Kaidan. I should order you to stay on the Normandy until we have this sorted.”

“But you’re not,” Kaidan said. “Thank you.”

Shepard closed his eyes, took a breath, and reminded himself this would all be finished soon. Very soon.

A part of Kaidan knew that he shouldn’t have insisted, especially not in front of the entire squad, but it was too late to take it back. Besides which, he would lose his mind sitting and waiting for them to come back to the Normandy. Benched, his only option was to worry, and he would be damned if he was going to sit back when he was still healthy enough to do something. Anything.

That was what he told himself as his head pounded. That was what he told himself as the medication that Mordin had given him threatened to wear off. It wasn’t so bad yet that he needed to go back to Mordin, and a part of Kaidan always shied away from the medication- he’d heard it from Alliance doctors for as long as he could remember, how he should _take_ medication, how he needed to take care of himself better. But he didn’t want to feel like he was relying on it, and anyway, Mordin was so close to having a solution, Kaidan would be fine.

That was what Kaidan told himself, and he wasn’t sure if he believed it. He was growing pessimistic in his old age, he thought jokingly.

He was in the bathroom near the mess. He knew that he’d overstepped his bounds about going on the mission, so he decided it was better to stay out of Shepard’s personal space until he was asked for. Or, maybe, he was avoiding the conversation for less altruistic reasons- maybe he just didn’t want to argue about it. Maybe he didn’t want to deal with the conversation that he absolutely should be having.

He put his hands under the faucet, cupping them as the water switched on. He splashed his face twice, his head spinning for a moment with the quick movement. He took a breath and tried to tell himself he wasn’t making a mistake: this was what he was going to do, and he wasn’t going to back out. It was exactly what Shepard would do, if he were in the same position.

After he managed to justify it enough for him to move on, he left the bathroom. He really should have expected what happened immediately after wards, but still, Jack standing only a few feet away from him was surprising.

She’d been waiting for him, arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against the wall opposite the bathroom. He’d been in there for a few minutes, so he had no clue how long she’d been there. He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder automatically, half-expecting Shepard to be behind him, to have been who Jack was waiting for. But he was clearly alone, and Jack was clearly staring at him expectantly, so he took a deep breath and went with it. “Hey, Jack, you need something?”

There was a flash of annoyance in her eyes- his tone, Kaidan figured, it probably sounded too _something_ , too ‘teacherly’ like Shepard had said, somehow too condescending to someone whose wounds were so very literally etched along her skin. He didn’t mean too, but he knew as well as anybody the sensitive ground he was covering with her.

“You volunteered to go to the Academy,” Jack dove straight in, her words sharp and blunt all at the same time. “You didn’t just volunteer- you made Shepard let you go. Why do something that fucking stupid?”

He looked down to his side with a snort. That was one way of describing what he’d said, wasn’t it? Fucking stupid. Shepard would probably say the exact same thing, too. It wasn’t Shepard standing in front of him right now, however- a fact that both made Kaidan exhale and say _thank god_ , and a fact that made Kaidan nervous, because he wasn’t sure from what angle he should approach this conversation. “Because I have to.”

She shook her head no, uncrossing her arms and digging her hands deep into the pockets of her baggy jail-jumpsuit pants. “You don’t _have_ to do anything. You don’t even have to be here, right? This was all what you wanted to do- fighting with Shepard is how you get your rocks off.” Kaidan grimaced at her wording, but didn’t interrupt her. “So I don’t get it.”

He could hear the unspoken ‘I don’t get _you._ ’ He wasn’t sure what there was to not get, but he’d try his best to explain. “There’s no law keeping me here, but _I_ feel like I need to be here.” He gestured with his head for them to move, walk anywhere on the ship that wasn’t the hall in front of the bathroom, but Jack didn’t move. He waited a moment, thinking she might change her mind, or at the very least respond to him, but when she didn’t, he sighed and tried again. “Just like Shepard needs to be where he is.”

“No, I get Shepard,” Jack argued. Her shoulders seemed to hunch up a little more with every word. She wanted to move, Kaidan thought, but didn’t- she wanted to _run_ but didn’t have a destination, he corrected himself after a beat. He knew what that felt like, knew it as intimately as he knew Shepard, as he knew being a soldier.

For a moment it was easy to think that he was talking to his own reflection, about a decade and a half ago. Same stubborn yet twitchy soldiers, full of defiance but still struggling, sometimes, with the complexities of others. It was jarring, but there had been a lot about Jack and the SR2 that was jarring for him. What was one more thing on that list?

“I get Shepard,” She continued, “Because he’s got his big mission. He’d do just about anything to put those fuckers down.”

“You don’t think I’m here to fight the reapers?”

“Please,” Jack snorted. “You could be up in your own Alliance ship doing whatever it was they had you doing, if you wanted to just do the war thing. You’re here with _Shepard_ because you wanna be with Shepard.”

Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck. “What’s so difficult about that to get? Isn’t that why you’re here? Not to fight the reapers, exactly, but because fighting with Shepard at your back…that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?” Jack pressed her lips together with the frustration of not getting her point across, her whole face altered by the scowl.

“I’m not looking to-”

“It’s not _about_ that,” Kaidan interjected. “Not going to say that sex isn’t part of it, but…that’s not why I want to stand with Shepard.” He sighed. He didn’t think she was interested in a long, detailed explanation of why he was in love with Shepard. She didn’t want to hear about how long he’d spent looking up to Shepard, admiring him, how Shepard was the strongest leader- the strongest man- that Kaidan had ever known. That there was no one he’d rather have at his side, on the battlefield, in a room, or yes, in bed, than Commander John Shepard. The little details- the way he rolled his shoulders and cleaned his guns- that made Shepard who he was, or the bigger details- how he’d rather die than stop moving, how he was a man single-minded enough to move star systems if he had to. “Why are you here?”

Jack pulled one hand out of her pocket and rubbed the other arm. “He was my ticket out of Purgatory.”

“So you owe him?”

“Yeah, but-” she snapped her jaw shut, and Kaidan saw something very similar to his own thought process pass through her eyes. She didn’t _love_ Shepard like he did, but she cared. She was there for Shepard and his mission, for whatever they ended up needing. She could run- just like he could be on another Alliance ship, he could be with his own squad somewhere else.

Jack could understand that, even if she didn’t want to. Kaidan smiled softly. “I won’t tell anyone we nearly shared a moment if you won’t.”

“We didn’t share a moment, jackass.” Like that, she was back to snapping, glaring Jack, instead of being awkward. She rolled her shoulders. “I just don’t get why you need to go down to the Academy.”

“I don’t like sitting out a fight if I don’t have to,” Kaidan replied with a shrug. “You hate it too.”

“What if you pass out,” Jack countered. “Or what if you can’t get your biotics under control?”

“I don’t know.” Kaidan couldn’t not be honest. “If we do this right I won’t have to find out an answer. I’ve spent a lot of years learning to control my biotics. I, uh…I know what it’s like to lose control of it where it counts. I like to think I’ve gotten better at…” He shook his head. The truth was he wasn’t sure. He could see himself, younger than Jack, much younger, lashing at Vyrnnus and breaking his neck. He had control now, but it was control of power that he _knew_ , and could he really promise that he would be able to control whatever had been done to him?

He was supposed to be smarter than this, he thought to himself. But this whole situation had made him angry, the kind of angry that he was sure that Shepard and Jack could understand. That Garrus and Tali and the rest of the squad would most definitely understand. He had to touch down with them.

“What about you?” Kaidan asked.

She made a face at him. “What about me?”

“What if the bomb goes off, and you get into contact with the substance?”

She snorted, shaking her head. “The kind of shit that Cerberus put me through? Let some drug make me more powerful for a little while- I’ll take ‘em all down and I won’t even get a headache.” It became a full-fledged bark of confident laughter, and Kaidan couldn’t help but let a smile tug at his lips again. “Oh, those terrorist fucks won’t know what hit ‘em.” That attitude, he knew, was the precise reason that Jack and Shepard got along so well. “Worst case scenario, they make me into a walking bomb- but as far as I’m concerned, I already am. So it’s better for these guys if you, me, and Shepard clean house and turn them into wall smears because they ever touch any of the students.”

_That_ was a fact that Kaidan felt no conflict about.


	7. Chapter 7

Underneath the statue of Jon Grissom that stood in the main hall, the evacuation had started. It hadn’t started nearly fast enough for Shepard, though, and there were still students milling around, still waiting their turn to be loaded into evacuation shuttles. Someone was taking this serious enough to clear the students out, he thought, but not seriously enough that they understood the urgency of it.

When they were done here, Shepard would find out from Hackett who was put in charge of the evac. Hopefully by then he’d be in a position to want to talk about the situation. Right now, he was itching to finish this.

His team was in the same situation. All four members of the ground team were busying finding their vantage points- Garrus was observing the evacuation from through his sniper rifle sight, on the upper level of the main area. A moment of barking at the guards that weren’t in charge of the evac, and Shepard had them doing a visual sweep of the area. Everyone had to keep an eye out, just in case, even as they waited for word from the air teams.

But something wasn’t right, still. Something about the evacuation was bothering Shepard, tugging at his gut. And over time, he’d discovered that his gut was pretty damned reliable. He turned his focus to his comm. “Kaidan, what’s the update on the bomb squad?”

“Still en route.” Kaidan was busy, like Jack and Shepard, assisting with crowd control, while Garrus took care of watching their backs. He sounded as bothered by the whole situation as Shepard was. “Delayed, according to traffic control.”

Shepard cursed under his breath. His shotgun wasn’t out, but his fingers curled and clenched, itching to grab it. He couldn’t, not with this many students around him. “Alliance bomb squads don’t get delayed, Kaidan. I need more information than that. _Now_.” He wasn’t angry with Kaidan, but his words were still laced with his frustration. The okay he got from Kaidan said that the soldier didn’t take it personal- most of the squad knew better than to do that. They all knew what direction that anger was going to be directed in.

If things went the way that they were supposed to- which Shepard knew rarely happened- the Normandy or the drop ship would intercept the inbound ships. They wouldn’t have to worry about much of a ground fight, but Shepard didn’t want to leave it to chance. He was on the ground with his team because that was where the threat would be, if the ship got through, if it landed, if the students were still on the ground…and it was _still_ taking too damned long for them to move.

He looked around the main hall, at all the students being filed out. The announcements about the next evacuation shuttle would play approximately every five minutes. Grissom Academy might not have been a military school, but there was simply no way that their evacuation plans were this sloppy. This slow.

“Something’s stalling, Shepard, I don’t like this,” Kaidan said after a moment. “I’m getting a lot of B.S. when I’m asking control why the evac isn’t finished. And the biotic program is still on station, for the most part. What do you want to do?”

He wanted to find the administrator in charge of the clear out and break their teeth, but that wouldn’t move anything forward- and it could possibly cause the kids to panic. Shepard took a deep breath as his eyes kept sweeping the crowd, watching the students, teachers, administrators…

…and that was the missing piece. He frowned. “Change of plans.” Even though he knew that they were linked in, he double-checked to make sure that all of the main Normandy crew could hear them. “I want the drop ship swooping in, and I want Tali, Vega, and Mordin on the ground. I don’t care if you’ve got to invoke Hackett’s name or you have to drop into a back service bay, you get down here ASAP. The assault’s not coming from the air.”

“Already changing course, Shepard,” Tali told him.

“What the fuck’s up?” Jack wanted to know. Her voice was audible outside of the comm, and when Shepard looked to his left, she was making her way through the crowd. “Why’s everything-”

“You think the bombs are on the ground,” Kaidan filled in over the comm, although he too could be seen making his way to Shepard. “What are we missing, here, Shepard? What do you see?”

“Uniforms,” Shepard explained. “We’ve got ourselves plenty of students, plenty of administrators and teachers…but where’s the staff? Janitorial, kitchen…You can’t tell me that they run Grissom on low numbers like this.” He gestured around. “What’s the best way to make sure your bombs go off when and how you want them to? Be on the ground long before the scheduled time. Keeps something like an evacuation from screwing up your plans, doesn’t it?”

“You sure they just didn’t make sure to get off the station first?” Jack countered.

Shepard shook his head. “Priority during an evacuation with no specific targets of interest goes to the students. And beyond that right now, it’s any biotics. Biotics haven’t moved yet…not enough of them. They’re being herded.”

Jack sucked her teeth, her hands starting to glow a fierce blue as she got angry. She and Kaidan nearly made a matched set, Shepard thought morbidly. “So we need to go to the staff rooms and knock some heads off, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that the only way to stall an evacuation reliably-”

“-is to run it,” Kaidan filled in. “Our terrorists have at least one person in traffic control, one or more staff members running the evacuation itself, and whatever other staff members in on the plot planting and triggering the bombs. We should be searching right now, not waiting.” Kaidan frowned deeply, and the hazy blue barrier around him darkened.

Shepard couldn’t afford to pay attention to Kaidan’s barrier now. If he did, he’d be more angry than he already was. Too angry and he’d lose focus. He had to regulate his anger, have just the right amount of rage that it kept his adrenaline up. So he focused on the bomb, on not having enough time to trace the thing to the staff of the Academy. He focused on the kids that were surrounding them right now, as a bunch of unintentional shields and young ticking time bombs.

He clenched his fists together tightly. “We’re wasting time here. We’re splitting up. Kaidan, Garrus, Jack- keep in communication, search every place you can, top to bottom. EDI, I need to know all the most likely places the bomb’s already been placed- any trace of the substance, or any unaccounted for Element Zero on this station, I want to know about it _yesterday_. Tali, you’re leading your team. Search and shut down any threats.”

“And what are you doing?” Kaidan asked warily, but his expression as he readied his pistol said he already knew.

Shepard smirked, and the expression was dark as death. “I’m going to check out traffic control and see if I can’t speed things up.”

And when he was there, _then_ he would take out his shotgun.

 

The staff uniforms were, in theory, what they were looking for, but the Normandy squad knew better than to assume that they’d still be in those uniforms. They kept an eye out for those particular colors, the shades of blue, black, and gray that weren’t the same dark blues-and-grays of the faculty uniforms, but Kaidan was positive that the men had dropped those uniforms already, switched into something else that would make it difficult to trace them.

It’s what any organized group would do, he thought. So he kept his eyes open for everything.

He made his way around the crowds of students. At first, Kaidan thought about heading down into the sub-levels of the academy. The most structural damage could be done there- by blowing electrical systems, maybe towards the outer arms of the station where the bombs could throw off the balance of the system.

On his way to the steps, his head spun in aggravation. He put an armored hand against the wall and watched it glow blue, watched the barrier pool out around his hand like water, or a dim, wavering spotlight. The bombs weren’t being blown in order to tear the station apart. He had to treat it as a gas, or a viral agent. That meant life support systems, ventilation, somewhere that the bomb would do damage, yes, but more importantly, would make sure that those hit by the bomb would be affected.

So either a place where they could guarantee the tainted eezo would spread throughout the station, or where they would expect to find all the biotic program students. Those students would have been housed separately, Kaidan knew, and so he brought up a quick map of Grissom Academy on his omnitool. He looked at the rooms for the students, and the practice rooms- the practice rooms were closest, and a quick overlay of the ventilation system confirmed that the bomb’s gas could still find its way through to other parts of the Academy.

It only took a couple of minutes to get to the proper hall, but in those couple of minutes, Kaidan was able to do a lot of thinking. A part of him was devoted solely to paying attention to his own vitals- the pounding of his heartbeat, the feel of dark energy over his body, the pressure building behind his eyes. He couldn’t _not_ focus on it. He was still fit enough to move, to fight, but he had to make sure that he didn’t put anyone else at risk. That wasn’t all he was worried about, however.

The students, and Shepard absorbed most of his thoughts. After all, if they messed this up, if that bomb went off- teenagers did a lot of stupid things already, teenagers with biotic abilities more so, Kaidan knew that from experience. Mordin could doctor up an antidote, yes, but would it be ready fast enough to fix any students affected? Just as importantly- Kaidan had merely touched a small amount of the element zero. A young student, still learning to control whatever biotic abilities that they had, suddenly struggling to control who knows how much more power than that- and they’d probably have been affected by far more of the stuff than Kaidan was.

He felt ill thinking about it. More ill.

And Shepard…Kaidan had catalogued a lot of Shepard’s looks. In the near three years since Shepard’s death, it had been painfully easy to summon up a mental image of the exact look Shepard would wear on his face in any given moment. Be it a sarcastic smirk, and battle-ready bearing of teeth, a laugh or a haunted, distant stare, Kaidan knew them all. He absolutely recognized the look on Shepard’s face in the briefing, and the one when Shepard had summoned Jack and Kaidan to his side only moments before.

Shepard wanted blood- not that Kaidan could blame him. Kaidan wanted…he didn’t want blood, but he wanted whoever was responsible for this to be stopped. Not even because they’d touched _him_ , but because of what they could potentially do to these kids. Shepard could be a diplomat, but not when he was this pissed off. Kaidan knew exactly how this would end if Shepard had his way.

It wasn’t that Shepard would be wrong, but Kaidan recalled their first encounter with the L2 terrorists. If they needed to be taken down, the squad would take them down- but with a few seconds of extra thought…maybe they could avoid the terrorists becoming martyrs as well.

Kaidan shook his head. Did he really think so little of Shepard, that he was so certain Shepard’s anger would overpower his ability to think? If anything, Shepard’s rage had always helped him, focused him. His anger worked miracles.

 

At that very moment, Shepard’s rage was on a short leash. And that was putting it mildly.

There was no point in keeping his shotgun put away neatly. He had a gut feeling that anyone remaining in traffic control was going to be…aggressive, at best, and he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t caught unaware. Still, he kept the shotgun at his side, in his hand, on the off chance that whoever was manning the controls didn’t deserve the barrel directly in their face.

There were three people in the traffic control room. One, a woman in a crisp blue and black uniform, was deftly dealing with the controls of the system, or at least one half of them, her hands flying back and forth over the projected screens as she monitored the docking traffic and security cameras.

The other person running the console was male, and shaking nervously, his fingers not nearly as steady over the screen as his female counterpart. The reason for that was obvious- the man holding a pistol directly at the traffic controller’s head. Seeing that, Shepard held up his shotgun.

The man with the gun reacted instinctively, perhaps just as scared as the man who he was keeping in check. While still holding the gun in one hand, the other hand came up quickly, upwards and outwards as it threw Shepard back with a blast of energy. Shepard cursed as he fell backwards- it wasn’t the most efficient of biotic throws, but it was enough to knock Shepard back on his ass momentarily. He rolled with the move, coming back up into position with the gun in his hands.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” he growled.

“I’ll kill this man,” came the predictable response. The obvious problem was, as predictable as the response was, there was truth to it. Shepard couldn’t fire the shotgun without one, risking the hostage’s life with the explosive shot or two, risking the hostage’s life when the biotic chose to fire the gun.

Fortunately, Shepard had more options than just the shotgun- it would just take a moment to get it set up. “I’m going to need you to step away. Both of you.” Shepard moved the gun barrel to point at the woman. The biotic man pressed the pistol up against the side of his hostage’s head. Shepard couldn’t help the snarl, that particularly savage curl of his own lip, as he watched the biotic dig his own grave even deeper.

Shepard lowered his shotgun to the floor, holding his fingers spread wide above it as he lifted his hand. While he did so, he took a quick, appraising look of the woman. No visible weapons, but probably a biotic as well. In order for her to do anything that Shepard would consider a threat, she’d have to stop working on her end of the traffic control. She clearly had an approximate time table- she had thrown Shepard a panicked look over her shoulder for a brief instant before going back to what she was doing. She would need more than a couple of seconds to prep any type of biotic move.

Which was what Shepard needed to know. Because the man with the gun might have had a hand free, but they weren’t together enough to make a decision in a under five seconds. The control room was small. All Shepard _needed_ was five seconds.

First second: activation of his infiltration cloak.

Second and third second: the amount of time it took for Shepard to rush the control room.

Fourth and fifth second: When Shepard’s invisible arms came up and across, grabbing the gun upwards while bringing the biotic man’s forearm _down_. There was a crack, a screaming cry of pain, and the man stumbled backwards, nearly into the console. Just as the infiltration cloak phased out, Shepard caught the man by the front of his uniform, the pistol now being held in Shepard’s other hand.

The pain would keep the man from using his biotics for a few minutes. While Shepard knew from Kaidan that all the young L2 biotics had been trained to withstand pain while using their biotics, Shepard knew from working with biotics in the past that if there wasn’t an automatic flare of energy from the pain, they weren’t going to be able to do much for a bit.

As the man’s broken arm finally released the gun, Shepard took the pistol and pointed it at the woman. He didn’t look at her; he didn’t need to. He was sure that he had her attention to. So instead he glanced at the hostage. “Can you make sure that the evacuation keeps moving?” The hostage nodded, although his breath was shaky. “Okay then, I need you to make sure those students are all _off_ this station ASAP.”

Shepard turned to look at the biotic he was holding, yanking the man in closer. “You and me are going to talk about those bombs.”

 

“I’ve got a location on two bombs.” Shepard’s voice came over the coms. “Garrus, I’m sending you the coordinates to one of them, and I’m on my way…Kaidan, Jack, you’re near the other.”

Kaidan glanced at his omnitool again. “How’d you get the-” he cut himself off. No, he could imagine pretty easily how Shepard got them the locations on the bombs. He would ask details later. According to the glowing dot on the Academy map, Kaidan had been on the right track when he went towards the training rooms.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Jack announced.

He was about to let her know that he heard, when Kaidan stopped for a moment, wrinkling his nose. There was that smell again, the thing like Red Sand but not quite…but it was close. Narrowing his eyes he looked around the hall. “Don’t come in here, Jack. I think we’ve got another leaky bomb this way. I don’t want you getting this stuff on you.” She was already starting on the deep breath she was going to use to fuel her argument, but Kaidan thought fast. “If there’s a leak, we need this place sealed off, and good. Jack, how’s your wide-range shielding?”

Shepard understood. “She can do it.”

“Shepard-”

“It’s like the run on Collector ship,” Shepard interjected. Kaidan shivered at the mere mention. He couldn’t imagine what Jack felt like. “You could do that then, you can definitely do this. It’s easy and stationery. I’m going to draw out where you need to keep up a barrier, Jack, all right?”

“Fine,” she spat out. She felt like she was being kept out of the fight; hopefully when they got back to the Normandy she’d see things a little differently. Either way, Kaidan couldn’t focus on that right now, just like he couldn’t focus on how Shepard got the locations of the bombs. He had bigger concerns.

The hall was cleared already- while the biotic students were still on the station, this area was already forcibly evacuated in spite of the terrorists’ best efforts. That, at least, had worked in their favor. With the omnitool map, Kaidan could slowly approach the room in which they had the bomb- not that it would have been difficult for him. The smell of not-Red Sand was distinct, he couldn’t miss it if he tried. It twisted his stomach- which was already twisting, to be frank- and brought up unasked for sense memory that he was trying his hardest to ignore at the moment.

“You’re a soldier,” Kaidan muttered to himself.

“What was that?” Shepard questioned?

Kaidan winced; he hadn’t spoken loud enough for Shepard to hear specifics, but he’d heard something. “Just a motivational mantra, Shepard, nothing to worry about.”

“Well, let’s finish defusing bombs before we get distracted by self-help, okay?” It was the closest sounding light-hearted that Shepard had been for a few days. His tone was still grim as hell.

There was no point in continuing any kind of banter- they both had their jobs to do, and being distracted wouldn’t help. The trail of leaking eezo- _sloppy work_ , Kaidan thought, the kind of sloppy that angered the Alliance soldier just as much if not more so than the terrorism attempt in the first place- was short, stopped at a closed door with a simple security keypad to the left of it, presumably to keep students from running in and out of there, practicing without supervision.

It was a good security keypad, but Kaidan had plenty of practice with his omnitool and keypads he didn’t have the code for. He made short work of it, and the lock on the door rotated and turned green as the door slid open.

The practice room reminded Kaidan of BAaT, except significantly less threatening- not quite the military-style practice room that the Alliance military had step up either. Along the walls were spokes and hooks, with cubes and balls attached, of foam, rubber, and harder materials. He recalled the kinds of exercises that the students would have to do in this room; lifting, tossing, moving objects around. More advanced students would do more delicate work- manipulating the large hooks on the objects to attach them and reattach them to the walls.

Kaidan had always been shit at the work that required fine motor control, at least compared to everything else. The big movements were what he excelled at. Not that there was much time for reminiscing in here. The current situation, as he saw it, would take a delicate hand, but the kind of delicate that could be dealt with in a short period of time. Less than five minutes, according to the the display over the tubes of eezo, which Kaidan was able to see as the man responsible for arming it stood up. The man turned and saw Kaidan, instantly reacting with a blast of dark energy, attempting to fling Kaidan into the air.

His barrier didn’t prevent someone else from altering the energy fields _around_ his barrier, even if Kaidan was able to move partially out of the way before the blast hit. It tossed him awkwardly to the side, as if a he was the doll of some child who’d tripped while throwing him.  Hitting- or bouncing off of- the wall held the particularly odd numbness that came with biotics and armor. The throw wasn’t enough to do much damage, not in combination with his armor and his barrier, so what he felt was the discomfort of his armor shifting against his will, the momentary dizzy spell of being tossed around, the milliseconds of time it took his head to reorient itself to his surroundings.

Kaidan had over a decade of military training ingrained in him, however, and while he couldn’t stay on his feet during the throw, he could damn sure pull out his pistol. The issue was the angle- if he fired from where he was, would they fall back onto the bomb? The group was a strange mixture of competent and sloppy; what if they tripped and triggered something.

“Stay where you are, and I won’t have to shoot you,” Kaidan said.

It was loud enough for the others to hear on the comm. “Fucking _shoot_ Alenko,” Jack snapped.

No, he wasn’t going to fire, but that didn’t mean he was as trigger shy as Jack likely thought that he was. He ignored her and focused on the biotic in front of him, on the brilliant blue of the man’s own barrier, thrown up defensively after attempting to hurl Kaidan across the room. It was a brighter, sharper blue- Kaidan didn’t need to be told why.

“That’s going to kill you,” Kaidan said, his voice softer than he intended. Diplomatic. “It’s going to burn you out.”

“That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for my cause,” the man spat, looking more at the dark energy around Kaidan than at Kaidan’s gun. “This close, we’re both going to-”

“We don’t have to,” Kaidan tried to convince him, very slowly standing up from the floor. His gun was still up. “We can keep the element zero from burning-”

“ _No!_ ” The man snapped, the blue barrier flaring outward in a wave, a pulse that pressed against Kaidan’s own barrier. “When the Alliance sees the kind of power that biotics are capable of, they’ll stop ignoring us. After they see what the children here are capable of, they’ll stop treating human biotics like second-class-”

“Is that what you think is going to happen?” Kaidan couldn’t help it when his voice crackled with anger. His chest ached from the way that his heart pounded- whether it was physical stress, fear, adrenaline, or more likely the dangerous combination of all the above, his heart thudded hard enough he could swear he felt it slamming against the inside of his armor. “No. What’s going to happen is a lot of young biotics will hurt themselves and others, and then people are just going to be scared.” Another pulse of barrier from the terrorist, and as it went through the room, it jostled the training objects on the wall. Kaidan’s eye was drawn to it for a moment, and in that brief instant he had a plan.

The reason he couldn’t shoot or yank the man around was because he was worried about something knocking into the bomb. One way to prevent that, however, was to use the environment to move the man clear of the explosive. After all, that had been what the room was meant for; maneuvering biotic puzzles and obstacles. The man was an obstacle. Kaidan knew how to move him. It was merely a question of whether Kaidan’s arms were faster than the man’s.

“I’m going to put the pistol away, okay?” Kaidan said. He struggled to pull the anger out of his voice, to sound more like his normally diplomatic self. The man started to slowly lift up his hands, curling the fingers into claws as he drew energy in tightly. “I’m going to put my gun away, and then we’re going to help each other.”

“You’re a fucking _traitor_ ,” the man retorted. He still stayed on the defensive, his gaze continuously flickering towards the door. Smart enough that he knew one armored man had to mean more. He didn’t need to know that Kaidan was sure Shepard was busy with this man’s cohorts.

Kaidan deliberately put his gun back into its holster. Not slowly, because he didn’t have time for that, but with wide movements so that there was no confusion as to what he was doing. The terrorist was having difficulty focusing, and with every wave of emotion, his barrier flared and flickered. Kaidan was hoping that would continue, hoping that would be distracting enough that the man wouldn’t notice how Kaidan’s own wide movements were preparation for what was about to happen _behind_ the man, along the wall of training balls.

“You don’t care less about the fate of your other biotics,” the man continued, “How _dare_ you pretend otherwise? You sided with the Alliance military- you’re what, thirty?”

“Something like that,” Kaidan heard his own voice vibrating with the emotion he was trying not to show, and heard his pounding heartbeat in his ears, loud as if he were hearing Garrus’ music through his comm. He swallowed, although his mouth was dry. If he did this wrong, well, it would be little more than an annoyance to the man, and then Kaidan would have to risk an attack that could hit or effect the bomb.

“Then you’re what, an L3?”

“L2, actually.” Kaidan hadn’t intended the sneer, but he was speaking through gritted teeth. “So I know what you went through. I was there. It happened to me- doesn’t make you _right_.” With that statement, Kaidan stretched out his hands and then pulled.

And overestimated the power increase. What was supposed to be one hard plastic training cube coming off the wall and hitting the biotic was every single one of the near dozen training objects, most of them taking the hooks off with them. The man barely had time to turn and see what the noise was when they all pummeled him, in a way that would have been humorous in any other situation.

The man was knocked forward instead of into the bomb, as Kaidan intended, which gave him enough space to pull another move, using a biotic pull and the terrorist’s own momentum to yank him forward. Kaidan moved out of the way at the same time, guiding the man into a full-face slam into the wall that had been behind Kaidan.

The cubes were dropping on the floor, and a few of them nearly hit the bomb, before Kaidan refocused part of his energy to keeping the afloat for the moment. With one arm he kept the training objects all up in the air, and with the other he made a couple of more jerking motions, slamming the man into the wall twice, three times before letting him drop. It was harsher than Kaidan would have normally done, yes, more of a Shepard move than an Alenko one, but he didn’t have time to do anything else. He needed the man knocked out and needed it now.

When he was certain that the man wasn’t moving- his scanner still picked him up, so he wasn’t dead, but he damn sure wasn’t getting up- Kaidan put the training cubes and balls on the floor. It was strange- it took more energy _not_ to fling them, not to use a brute blast of energy, than it should have. The power came more easily, of course, but it was a faucet, it seemed, that was harder to turn off.

Finished with using his abilities for the moment, there was a rush of dizziness, and Kaidan tried to shake it off. He was sweating as he knelt down beside the bomb, yanking off his armored gloves so he could have more control as he moved to disarm it. Less than two minutes, he scowled, switching his omnitool back on to assist him. He’d have to work quickly.

“I hope you’re doing better than I am, Shepard.”

 

“And we’re done here.”

Garrus stood up from the bomb, linking his fingers and cracking his knuckles. The fact that they’d just deactivated the bomb made Shepard able to snort a little bit, a small grim smirk curling the edge of his lips. The two terrorists that were shot at the entrance to the cafeteria made it even easier.

The one that Shepard had grabbed from the control room, who was nursing a broken arm, a broken wrist (couldn’t allow him movement to use his biotics, Shepard reasoned), was on the floor too, but he was kneeling. Shaking with maybe rage, mostly fear, but he was alive. Shepard hadn’t allowed him to go into shock because he needed at least one of these guys around to answer for their crimes. He and the rest of the Alliance needed answers, and this man would give them some.

Or at least he would if he wasn’t such a fanatic it had turned him stupid. Considering how long it had taken Shepard to get the necessary bomb locations from him, Shepard greatly doubted that.

“Good,” Shepard said. “One down- Jack, Kaidan, update.”

Jack’s voice came first. “He’s got me on shield duty.”

“Sounds unhappy,” Garrus noted. _Not_ on the comm, Shepard was relieved to say.

“I know that already, Jack,” Shepard continued. “Are you guys all right? Did Kaidan find the other bomb?”

“I know he dealt with whoever was in there, I think he’s disarming it no-” Jack started, before Kaidan’s voice interjected.

“Bomb deactivated.”

Kaidan should have sounded happier about that. His voice shouldn’t have sounded strained, and he shouldn’t have sounded _sick_. No, not sick, Shepard corrected himself. Kaidan’s voice shouldn’t have been that tired sounding, exhausted. Shepard knew what Kaidan sounded like in stressful situations, knew what state Kaidan was in after the hardest of fights. This, Shepard knew, shouldn’t have been a hard fight.

“Kaidan, what is it?” Before Kaidan couldn’t answer, Shepard gestured at the injured terrorist. Garrus nodded sharply, his ‘I got it,’ going unspoken. Shepard was out the door.

 

As Shepard moved, Kaidan gave him the quickest rundown that he could: the bomb was deactivated, but the scene was completely contaminated.

The leak had been on the bomb, he knew, not some trace amounts of eezo that the terrorist had brought with him. Kaidan knew that the second he moved in close, the second that the not-Red Sand smell filled his nostrils. He blinked, suddenly reminded of a time when he’d been drunk and an ex had thrown Sand in his face. His brain recalled the sting of it in his eyes even as he tried to focus, and he kept bracing himself for that particular pain.

The tainted eezo was on his fingers as he worked, and was still there when he was finished. Kaidan felt the tingle of it. What was it that Mordin had said? The tainted eezo didn’t cause more nodules in a biotics’ cells, it stressed the already existent ones. It pushed them to a greater capacity, and then pushed that to its limit.

One of the tubes was cracked, and even though he’d disarmed the bomb, there was eezo on his hands. More than was supposed to be in contact with one person, he was sure, and with that much contact it was starting to do its job immediately. It felt as if his hands were pulsing, like every molecule in his skin was pressing up and out. The feeling rode up his arms while he was disarming the bomb, and only got worse when he was done, spreading across his shoulders, his shoulder blades, his spine, his legs.

It was a disturbing feeling, along with the buzzing of his shield. The stronger it got the more he could feel the pressure of Jack’s bigger area shield, as if he was near touching it, pressing against it. He focused as much as he could on reigning it in, and he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his head for his effort.

He felt suddenly as if he was sniffling, and he lifted the back of his hand to his nose- his nose was bleeding. “Great.”

He blinked away sweat and attempted to focus. Jack was shielding the whole area but eventually they’d have to move the remnants of the bomb. From Mordin’s research, they could probably get a non-biotic clean up team to do it, and Jack could probably get the treatment that Mordin whipped up to handle if any traces of the eezo got on her, but this leak was bigger. The broken tube could get on anything- and Kaidan certainly couldn’t be in physical contact with any other biotics right now.

Although the way that he felt right now, his heart pounding so much it hurt and the fact that it felt as if his very lungs were trying to contort themselves to make room for the biotic energy, he wasn’t sure if that would be a long term concern. And wouldn’t that be wonderful, sharing that piece of information with Shepard?

The leak wasn’t Kaidan’s fault, but he sure as hell felt as if he’d managed to screw this all up. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he thought about what he could for sure do now. It took barely that much thought to make his own version of an area shield, to form a bubble around himself and the deactivated bomb. It was easy, but it was hardly painless- it was as if the energy was desperately running from him, instead of flowing freely.

He really hoped he held on long enough that he didn’t have to go with that damn smell in the area. The irony of it was just too much for him.

 

Shepard skidded to a stop when he got to Jack. He wasn’t the only one that had gotten to her; the secondary team was coming from the opposite end of the hall. Mordin spoke first. “The major needs suppressant and medical attention immediately. Can’t cure on the ground, cannot move him until cleaned. Hell of a complication.”

“Make it not a complication, doc, and make it fast,” was Shepard’s only response.

“Tali and I don’t have any biotic abilities, commander,” Vega offered. “Neither do you. If the doctor’s got something to clean him up, we can do the job here and now.”

“Without risking further contamination to the station,” Tali added. “Even if I were biotic, my suit would prevent pretty much all contact.”

“Mordin, I’m hearing a lot from them, what can you do for me?” Shepard demanded. He was itching to just order Jack to let him through her barrier, to rush to Kaidan’s side. He was twitchy, even, his arms crossed to keep himself from comfortingly putting a hand on his gun.

Mordin tilted his head, considering the situation. “Can give you suppressant, Shepard. Decontamination is the problem…unless…” Mordin glanced over at Tali. “Yes, could work. Excellent- Tali’zorah’s defense drones could form a non-biotic shield around the bomb, allowing bomb to be shielded without Kaidan’s assistance. Could even allow for possible movement of bomb. Drones could be used to clean  halls, allowing Jack  to return to the ship shortly.”

“And Major Alenko?” Shepard wasn’t going to focus on anything else right now. He spent every hour of every day thinking about _everything_ else, about the mission, about every individual member of the crew, ever soldier, every civilian that they came across. He spent his hours immersed in the politics of people that he barely understood, in the politics of his _own_ race that he barely understood- but right now there was only one thing, one person, one individual that he cared about. And he needed to know what they were going to do about him.

“Best way for drones to clean substance…high temperatures, not good for human skin,” Mordin tsked, shaking his head. “Drones not viable options. Need the major on ship for proper decontamination. And to finish synthesizing antidote.”

“How. Do. We. Move. Him?”

“We use my barrier,” Kaidan’s voice came over the comm again, weak enough that Shepard wanted to shake him for speaking. “I can…it’s easier to…block everything. I can shield myself.” That sort of additional strain defeated the point of the suppressant, Shepard thought, of all the medication that Mordin had been using already to delay the effects of the tainted eezo. Shepard’s hands clenched into a fist. “Send the drones in…I’ll walk out when…the bomb’s secured.”

Shepard didn’t want to say okay. He clenched his jaw so tight it hurt, looking away from the group. “Send in the drones.” He glanced at Mordin. “Give me the suppressant.”

 

When the drones set up a zone around the bomb, Kaidan attempted an exhale of relief, but that effort ached deeply. He stood up and made his way out the room. With everything hurting so, it was difficult not to lean against every wall for support, but he couldn’t do that; no point in leaving more traces of the eezo on the walls, more spots that could possibly be missed in the decontamination process.

He dragged his feet towards the edge of the barrier. He dragged his feet towards the members of the crew, wiped his the blood from his nose. Kaidan saw Shepard’s worried, angry-scared look and almost smiled fondly at it. He knew Shepard so well- he knew what the expression would look like before he saw it, before he’d stepped out of the room.

“Jack,” Shepard was saying, “You’re going to close the barrier in tighter, past Kaidan. Not too much, just enough…”

The edge of Jack’s barrier over Kaidan’s armor and skin was a strange electric buzzing, pressing with even more pressure than his own barrier. Of course it did- Kaidan knew how powerful she was.

Kaidan stood there, barely, his skin vibrating under the brilliant blue of his barrier. He wanted to sit down, lie down, anything to get the pressure off of his legs, which felt like they were threatening to explode. “Someone said something about medication?” He joked thinly. Shepard stepped forward, lifting one hand up tentatively towards Kaidan’s neck. It took effort- a lot of painful effort, to lower the barrier enough for Shepard to actually touch Kaidan’s face carefully. Shepard was cataloguing everything that was wrong, Kaidan knew that. “Hey, you know, Mordin could do this part too.”

“I’d rather it be my job,” Shepard said after a beat.

“Same here.”

With the other hand, Shepard quickly used the medical pen.


	8. Chapter 8

Less than twenty four hours later, Kaidan’s body ached as he laid in the med bay. He was sore, but his body didn’t feel like it was trying to explode anymore, his very cells didn’t seem to be trying to shred him apart, and he could walk, which was something he could barely say about himself when they’d first taken him off of the Grissom Academy space station.

Almost more importantly, while Mordin hadn’t sent him through any specific tests, he knew that his biotics were starting to settle back, be a little bit closer to their normal levels. Still more than he was used to- his barrier was a thin blue buzzing line around him that flickered and flared maybe a few times an hour at this point- but manageable. He was hoping for the good news that everything would inevitably settle back to normal, without any lasting effects.

Mordin hadn’t wanted to say _that_ much quite yet, and had been the first person to point out that a slight permanent increase in his biotics wouldn’t be a wholly negative thing. Kaidan had never been so relieved that Shepard changed the topic of conversation in his life.

Chakwas had also done her head to toe examination. He loved Dr. Chakwas, he did- and her examination felt far less invasive than Mordin’s, to be perfectly honest- but he was very much over being doctored at this point. Every poke, prod, or question was another tweaking of nerve. Chakwas noticed it, however, and once she was done with her checkup, she told him that he should visit her again in a day or two, and took her leave, happy to see him functioning regularly.

No one was happier than him, he thought to himself. Now alone for a moment in the medbay, he got up off the examination table, rolling his shoulders and stretching. This whole adventure had come with a feeling of losing control that was far more personal than anything that the reapers or Collectors had thrown his way yet. He didn’t like it- he really didn’t like the fact that other biotics had…

Kaidan shook his head. No. It was done and over, and an Alliance transport vessel was on its way to grab the remaining terrorists for questioning and a trial. Kaidan wasn’t in the comm room when Shepard updated Hackett on the situation, but he was sure that this was just another point in Shepard’s favor, another bit of leverage that Hackett could use to keep Shepard from having to face trial. And that, Kaidan thought, made all that lack of control worth it. That was what he was going to say if anyone asked, anyway.

It took him a few seconds longer than it should have to find his shirt. When he pulled it over his head, he heard the sound of the door sliding open and feet walking in. Spend enough time on a squad with people, it became easy to pick out the sounds of their footsteps. He smiled and yanked the shirt the rest of the way down.

“I wasn’t expecting a full parade,” Kaidan joked.

Shepard rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb in the direction of the other two who were following him. “I tried to tell them you’d need your rest still, but some people are too damned stubborn.”

Garrus merely snorted, arms crossed, the clear comeback about Shepard’s own stubbornness far too easy. Jack jumped up on the examination table that Kaidan had just vacated, crouched up there in a way that only she could make look casual. “Told him you’ll get plenty sleep when you’re dead. Figured you needed to see something that didn’t make you feel like a lab rat.”

Kaidan chuckled softly, shaking his head. That was quite possibly the sweetest thing that Jack would ever say to him, but he wasn’t so dumb that he’d tell her that. “Thanks for the company, I guess.” She’d boiled down how he was feeling to an accurate point. While he doubted he was up for anything that she’d consider fun and relaxing- at least not _yet_ anyway-, the thought was nice.

“That was some quick thinking on Grissom,” Garrus granted him. “Nice work.”

“Was it?” Kaidan wasn’t so sure. With distance he thought of a dozen other ways that things could have gone down, most of which didn’t involve him bashing a man’s head in until he was unconcious.

Shepard shrugged. “I would have done the same thing in your place.” Kaidan raised an eyebrow at him, and Shepard mirrored the expression with a small smirk. No, Kaidan knew what Shepard would have done. He’d done it to the other terrorist.

“Don’t start getting fucking disgusting on us,” Jack sneered. “We’re still in the room, and I know bird-boy over here doesn’t want to watch you make eyes at each other anymore than I do.” Shepard was caught unaware, and nearly choked on his own laughter at the comment. “Thought doctor’s orders had been to keep it easy, Shepard. Don’t wanna-”

“Jack…” Shepard said warningly. Jack looked amused and smug, completely unphased by Shepard’s warning. He shook his head and turned back to Kaidan more soberly. “How are you feeling?”

After tucking his shirt in, Kaidan moved to sit in the chair at Chakwas’ desk. He lowered himself with a sigh, not of effort, but just because he was sitting down without someone immediately leaning in to check the dilation of his irises. He lifted one hand to rub his own shoulder. “I’ve felt better but…I don’t think I’ve got much to complain about right now.” He smiled at Shepard. “And you?”

“I’ll feel great once these assholes are off my ship,” Shepard said. “Otherwise they may not make it to Hackett…” It wasn’t a joke, but Garrus and Jack both found the comment funny enough. “We were just checking in on you, so if you’re still tired…”

“No, no, I’m fine. I’m not…perfect or anything,” He raised an arm as the barrier appeared and flickered for a moment, “But I’m getting there.”

Jack looked unimpressed. “Don’t worry, I won’t make too much fun of you for being a chump again.”

“Chump?” Kaidan’s mouth dropped for a moment, although he was laughing. “I may not be as strong as you, but I’m _not_ a-” Jack was snickering, and it reminded Kaidan that this wasn’t an argument that he was going to win- or even try to win, really. So he put up his hands like a white flag, shaking his head. “Hey, I was all for the company, but if the company is just going to be making fun of me-”

Jack managed to lean back slightly while still crouching, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Whatever, Alenko. You want us to clear out?” Jack’s tone managed to make it clear she was just talking about her and Garrus, not Shepard. Kaidan didn’t even have time to respond before Jack rolled her eyes, climbing off the examination table. She made her way to the door. “Come on, Garrus, let’s see what stupid shit we can get Vega to say before these two jump across the room to tongue each other.”

Kaidan and Shepard both looked away as Jack ushered Garrus out of the room. “Really, she was worried about you,” Shepard said as soon as they left. “But don’t tell her I told you.”

“I promise to keep it to myself,” Kaidan said, glancing up at Shepard without getting up.  Shepard moved from in front of Kaidan, around to the back of the chair. Kaidan started to turn so that he could keep facing Shepard, but the commander put a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, shaking his head.

Shepard began massaging Kaidan’s shoulders, his hands working with an expertise that he could only have from having massaged Kaidan’s shoulders more times than Kaidan could remember. He melted into the feeling, the familiarly calloused hands- how had they done that, Kaidan’s mind thinks without his permission, how did even the callouses feel the way they had before Shepard had been spaced- kneading knots that Kaidan had been doing his best to ignore.

“You’re really okay?” Shepard asked after a beat.

Kaidan nodded. “ _Yes_ , Shepard. We’ve been through worse, you know, and we’ve always come out fighting.” Well, when they came out of it at all, Kaidan didn’t add, his hand come up to touch Shepard’s. Shepard paused, obviously thinking the same thought. “Don’t stop what you’re doing, Shepard. It’s kind of…cruel.”

“I wouldn’t want to be cruel,” Shepard said, slowly starting to massage again. “Even if I do have to be gentle.”

Kaidan smirked, even though he knew that Shepard wasn’t looking at the moment. “Who said that?”

“Doctor’s orders, remember?”

Son of a… “And _I_ said I was fine.”

“Well then.” Shepard leaned in. Kaidan tilted his head up and to the side, making it easier for Shepard to give him a teasingly gentle kiss. “You’re just going to have to prove it to me, Major.”

 

Shepard knew exactly what giving Kaidan even the slightest hint of a challenge would result in. That was why, even though Kaidan was supposed to be resting, Shepard was on the bed while Kaidan climbed on top of him. Kaidan always responded to Shepard’s challenges, and he always responded with _that_ lop-sided smile, that one expression that rivaled Shepard’s own smirk.

Shepard was absolutely planning to tell the doctors that Kaidan had spent the rest of the day in bed, like a good patient.

They hadn’t gotten undressed yet, a particular torture that Shepard wished wasn’t still true, but Kaidan was deciding their pace. Not slow, not at all- not with the way they’d barely waited until the door of the captain’s quarters snapped open. Not with the way they’d near tumbled into the room, hands already reaching underneath shirts and between thighs.

It was a game, the speed. Every few seconds Shepard would attempt to forcibly change the speed. Drawing Kaidan’s head up for a long, hard, slow kiss to throw Kaidan off of the many quick kisses along Shepard’s neck. Shepard’s hand massaging the back of Kaidan’s neck slowly. Kaidan melted into it, the same way that Shepard melted into him with every single rough kiss, lick, and occasional playful nibble, but he’d break off the kiss or touch with a low chuckle, with that smirk that said that he knew what Shepard.

With that low chuckle that said that Kaidan was going to call the shots for the moment. And while Shepard _had_ to tease, had to push back, he had no complaints what so ever.

Kaidan undid Shepard’s pants, yanking them down and off. He leaned back down to kiss Shepard while he pulled off Shepard’s briefs as well, chuckling again at the feeling of Shepard’s bodily response to him wrapping his fingers around Shepard’s cock. Shepard moaned deeply, regretting the fact that since he was already laying back against the bed, there was no way to drop his head back further. “Fuck, Kaidan, I missed this. So…fucking…much.” Kaidan either knew whenever Shepard was planning on swearing, or was drawing the swearing out of him, because each time Shepard attempted to get the word out, Kaidan’s hands shifted and Shepard jerked upwards.

“I’ll have to make sure you never have to miss me again,” Kaidan murmured, between kisses.

Shepard’s hand drifted down to touch Kaidan’s wrist. Kaidan paused, waiting to see whether Shepard wanted him to move or stop. Shepard didn’t want any of the above, however, and simply brushed his thumb across Kaidan’s wrist gently. “I said _this_ , Kaidan,” Shepard taunted. “Not-”

“You can’t even say that out loud, and you know it,” Kaidan responded by speeding up his strokes, effectively killing any chance Shepard had at attempting to make the terrible joke.

In between grunts and being distracted by Kaidan’s lips- which Shepard made sure to kiss every time Kaidan lifted his head from Shepard’s neck- Shepard managed to reply. “You’re right. And I don’t want to miss you anymore, Kaidan.” The next stage after having difficulty thinking was thoughts that wouldn’t quite go away, no matter how good Kaidan felt on him.

He was tired of missing Kaidan. He was tired of being braced to miss him, to have to worry that he was going to have to miss him. He was sick of being that for Kaidan as well, sick of having to watch the worry on Kaidan’s face before the relief. And it wasn’t going to stop, not really, not for a long time- because thy might have finished dealing with this clusterfuck, but there were so many more-

Shepard wasn’t going to let himself miss Kaidan anymore, he decided, propping himself up on one elbow. He pulled his hand away from Kaidan’s wrist and let it rest on Kaidan’s bicep instead, bringing Kaidan in for another slow kiss. He wasn’t trying to challenge Kaidan there, there was no taunting smirk or smile involved- but he needed to kiss Kaidan then, needed the exact taste and shape of Kaidan’s lips on his, the feel of Kaidan’s lower lip as Shepard bit it, gently but possessively.

They barely pulled away from each other, Kaidan staring back at Shepard. They didn’t need additional words for Kaidan to know where Shepard was coming from. Kaidan let go of Shepard’s cock and put his hands on both sides of Shepard’s face, coming in for a rough and passionate kiss. It had the same possessiveness in it that Shepard’s kiss had, the same strands of an apology- _for ever leaving, for ever doubting you_ \- and a promise- _never again, I_ _’m in this forever._

While still kissing Kaidan, Shepard undid Kaidan’s pants. With Kaidan’s assistance, they managed to get his pants and underwear off, even though Kaidan was far more concerned with continuing the kiss for as long as possible.

The friction between their penises only spurred them on more. Kaidan pulled at Shepard so that instead of Kaidan being on top of them, they were both laying side by side on the bed. Shepard managed to have on hand on both of their cocks, pumping away, and the other clenched in Kaidan’s hair. With each stroke, Kaidan was more intent on proving to Shepard that they were in this forever, and with every kiss Shepard was more determined to get them both off.

Kaidan’s hands drifted from Shepard’s face to Shepard’s side, to slipping underneath Shepard’s shirt- had they really not gotten to the point of taking them off? It was almost ridiculous, if Shepard could find it in himself to care. Kaidan’s hands, familiar calluses and strengths, massaged at Shepard’s back, thumbs and fingertips pressing along the shoulder blades. Shepard might have been moaning; he might have been murmuring streams of unintelligible curses. He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, but he was sure Kaidan’s name popped up more than a few times. He heard his name a few times as well, through what was most definitely a hissed stream of curses and ‘yes’s.

Shepard sped up his stroking, and Kaidan kissed harder. Kaidan stopped the tiny massages and gripped Shepard’s back, nearly clawed at it. When they came, Kaidan shortly after Shepard, they shuddered on each other, still not willing to break contact- still wanting nothing more than to never break the unspoken promise they’d just made.

Shepard could feel Kaidan’s chest rise and fall with every breath against him. Heavy, deep breaths. “You all right over there, Alenko?” Through heavy breaths of his own, Shepard managed to chuckle, managed to have a little bit of teasing under those words.

The playful gleam in Kaidan’s eyes was nearly enough for Shepard to lose it all over again. Kaidan reached down, hand not on Shepard’s cock but on his thigh. When Kaidan brought up his barrier, when that blue was glowing, Shepard could feel it. And that would definitely help speed them on to their next round.

“Are you?"

 

End


End file.
